NGE: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent
by EarthScorpion
Summary: The Reego: four AIs made by the Angel of Terror from Rei and Unit 05's mental patterns.  The Keiworu: two AIs, made by Kei, blending her and Kaworu without asking him, escaped from SEELE.  Australia: a desolate monster-filled hellhole.  Good day, mate!
1. Chapter 1: Routine

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 1: Routine

...

The technical was burning. Its long abused engine had overheated, and now flaming oil, from the engine, dripped out, to pool around the vehicle. With a _whoompth_, first one of the front tires, then the other, ignited. Black smoke, choking and toxic, joined the spires from the mainstay of the car, reaching high into the eternally thunder-cloud filled skies of Australia. Despite the omnipresent bruise-coloured clouds, though, it seldom rained, and the sweltering heat baked the rocks and ground just as hard as it had when it used to be eternal sunlight.

The back door of the camper van opened, and a man half-fell, half-slithered out, one hand pulling a limp child along after him, a crying baby carried in a sling around his neck. He dragged them to safety, uncaring of the fact that his hat was smouldering, then deposited them together on the dust-covered road, rushing back with the last of his strength, to try to grab the last of the vital supplies. Water, packets of dried food, a machete, a bolt-action rifle, and what looked like a wooden shield, with a car battery strapped to it. The tools cascaded out of his arms, to fall next to the older child, even as the man collapsed, his sunglasses shattering on the impact with the ground.

Well. This was the end for him. Their little town, in the remnants of the mine, gone. Blown up. His wife, dead, before she could even get close enough. Old friends, all dead. Old enemies, all dead.

There. There! On the horizon, something moving in the mirages and the heat haze. God, he hoped it was someone, and just wasn't a hallucination of his dehydrated, burned mind.

The convoy approached, as he tried to unscrew the cap of the water, to try to get his unconscious son, and squalling infant daughter to drink anything, his head spinning. Squinting in the strange light which has been all which he had known since the year 2000, his heart fell.

Oh. He was going crazy. And they were going to all die out here, first him, then his children.

Because he couldn't believe that there was a column of cars, all painted green or blue and white, led by a spider-tanked tank-thingie, and a bunch of little girls riding on the top of the armoured column. That was insane. For one, no-one could even build things like that, even the crazy Texan who'd been in the mine, bought over before the disaster.

He was dead now. Just like all the others.

The man blinked. At some point, he'd collapsed, cheek pressed against the red sand which covered the hard, hot tarmac of the road. His vision was dimming, the colours fading to grey. And he could hear a muttering in the distance.

"... uh, where's my talkin' to people body. Talkin' to people body, talkin' to people body. Oh, yep, back of the tank. Gotta keep it neat, after all. Can't let my good dress get ruined."

There was a crowd of little girls surrounding him, filling his vision. And from what he could hear, they were behind him as well, not just in front of him, but he couldn't gather the strength.  
"Ooooh! Look. A baby!" he heard someone say, but it was an odd choral effect. Probably due to his injuries, the man considered. And looking at them... well, they looked identical. Except... they didn't. They looked like they might have once been identical, but damage and wear had left them all different.

Oh, and the fact that some of them were just metal skulls, red cybernetic eyes glowing, sharp teeth glinting in the light. That obviously wasn't real.

The crowd parted without a word, to let one in a red dress skip forwards, who squatted down next to him. This one looked more human, with pale skin, blue hair, and red eyes, but in his fading vision, there was something artificial about the whole thing.

"Heee~e~ey," the one squatting next to him said. "So, who are ya, then?"

Oh well, the man decided. He might as well act like it was real, because if it was real, he might save his children, and get a warning out, while if he was just hallucinating, he would die anyway.

"Please..." he croaked. "Look... l-look after them. The... the b-b..." he wet his lips, tongue feeling like sandpaper, "the b-b-blue ones came. They blew up the town. Not just bandits. So... cr-cr-cross. Us and the... others. All... dead. Light... f-f-f-fire. Look... after... them..."

And with that said, he closed his eyes, and died.

"Uh... okay?" said the little girl. "But what happened with the light and the fire and the... oh, riii~iight. You're dead."

She was promptly knocked down by the little boy tackling her in a ferocious, desperate, _needy_ hug. All around her, the other little girls and cars and tanks aimed their multitude of weapons at him, some popping out of concealed places in their carapaces, before lowering them again, as she realised that it was no threat.

And the girl inhabiting the shell realised she couldn't get up without hurting the boy. She directed another of her shells to pick up the baby, lift it off the hot, sandy ground, and then paused. What to do?

"Uh... guys?" Una bounced the signal internally, up into the satellite which connected the distributed communication nodes of the AI network which was currently... let's just call it "Yui-Related Entity"ing its way across Australia. "I've kinda got babies here. An' the adults are dead." She paused. "I think you'll want to be here, so, um, I'm freein' up some bodies for ya." As she said that, three of the little girl robots went limp.

A pause, then one, then another straightened up. "I am assuming direct control," intoned one, in a notably more refined voice.

"Yep, what she said," added the other. "Heeee~ey~ Una! What's up?"

"Heee~e~ey! And stuff's up," the first figure gestured with her free hand, taking in the burning car. "I mean, look at all this!"

"Awwww. Why'd ya have to go and do that, Una?" The robot crossed its arms. "I could have used that van! And... awwww, the ammo will be totally wrecked. You knoo~oow we're getting low on .50cal BMG, don'cha?"

The first, and original robot glared at her sister. "It wasn't me, Duae," she said. "They're not bandits... 'least, I don't think they were. They were like it when I found them. An'... an' ... an' what'd you mean, we're getting low on .50 cal?"

The second of the newcomers tilted her head. "The central supply of that calibre has been depleted notably by Tres, Ivy and my brother's little trip into the Outback," she explained. "We have not found any fresh supplies of that specific calibre in thirteen days. At present consumption, even if those three do not come back, we will only have sufficient supplies for five more days of routine operations."

"That sucks," said Una, slumping down

"Indeed."

"02-Ef an' me were trying to work out how to solve some of our problems with that stuff when you called us," Duae added.

"Yeah, and I'm _totally_ sure 02-Ef wasn't having a tea party with my refugees," Una said, with a glance at the AI shell which wasn't inhabited by her sister.

"I still am," the little girl said, shamelessly. "It isn't as if I cannot split my attention between multiple shells, after all. And I believe I have made a breakthrough in the instruction of both manners and elocution." She raised one hand. "And, yes, I am also trying to sift through internet archives to find old pages on Australia, to find where potential resource caches are, to pre-empt your next question."

"An' she's helping me repair one of Ivy's spider tanks, too," Duae added. "So, come on, Una, we're kinda busy here."

One of Una's hands collided with one of her faces. "Ivy broke another tank. Awwww, Ivvvv~vvvvy!" She shook her head. "Well, anyway, like, as I said, I found them. The adults are a bit dead, and we've got one," the eye of the shell still pinned by the crying boy focussed, with a whir, "five, maybe six year old boy, and one girl baby."

"We have _**babies**_?" asked 02-Ef, curiously. The others squinted at her for a moment, and then shrugged. Both her and her brother had that speech impediment. Neither knew where it came from.

"Yep. So... what do babies need to keep them alive?" Una asked. "I mean, we've gotta take them back, but... yeah. What 'till them?"

Duae leaned in. "Well, um, have we tried changing its oil?"

02-Ef shook her head confidently. "No, we just need to make sure they have a connection to sufficient processing capacity, and they will be fine." She paused. "Actually, wouldn't it be easier to just save both of them to disk, and then load them into a new shell when we get back?"

All around, Una robots facepalmed. With both hands. "Why'd I have to get both of you two, huh? Humans don't work like that! Arrrrrgh! Even Ivy knows that, stupid!"

"Yes, well," 02-Ef crossed her arms, "they... they should," she said, sullenly.

Duae nodded. "Yep." She turned her head slowly. "Yep. So, right, if we slowly replace all of the bits of the brain with their computer-versions, we can then totally do it, and no-one will have to die ever!"

Una formed a circle around the two children. "No, neither of ya are getting near them. Just... just go get a link to..." she managed, before 02-Ef interrupted.

"Ahah! I have found something. Yes, it says here that human _**babies**_ feed of a thick nutrient substance known as milk, which is released from the mammary glands of an adult female. It is right in fat, protein, and calcium, which are all required for the growth of a healthy human being." She frowned. "And lots of other animals produce milk, too; it appears to be the conventional method for mammals to feed their offspring." Another pause. "Although, if you feed a human infant goat's milk, it can cause megaloblastic anemia, which is caused by inhibition of DNA synthesis in red blood cell production and is characterized by many large immature and dysfunctional red blood cells, called megaloblasts, in the bone marrow and also by hypersegmented or multisegmented neutrophils." And she paused again. "Although sometimes megaloblastic anemia can be caused by Azathioprine, which is a drug which in-in-in-in-in-inhibitssssssssssss..." and the speakers cut out, as the AI vacated the shell.

The two Reego glanced at each other. "Well," Duae said, "she's got stuck on that site again. She won't do anything until she gets bored of following links. She's kinda got that problem, yep."

"Yep," Una said. "'Least she dropped out of my body," she added, speaking through the mouth of the recently vacated shell. "You know, I saw some kangaroos coming in. And they weren't firebreathing or anything. They're mammals, right?"

Duae nodded. "So we go take their milk? Makes sense. Although 02-Ef did say that you can't feed human babies goat's milk."

"Yeah, but kangaroos aren't goats," Una pointed out, reasonably. "So, let's go get it. I'll stick the boy," who, by now, was clinging to the hand of the one metre high robot with absolute terror, "and the baby in one of my cars, and we'll go get the milk."

"Yeah, makes sense," Duae shrugged. "See ya."

And with that said, the body went limp, only to start up again, as Una resumed control.

...

Somewhere outside the desolate, storm-covered wasteland that was Australia, an exponentially number of requests began to hit the DNS servers, as, suddenly, Australia began to generate a web presence which... well, was still much, much reduced over what it had been in 2000, when civilisation there had died, but was a lot larger than it should have been.

Sysadmins all across the world had already begun to talk of "The Austalian Haunting". On black IRC channels and hidden, user-locked forums, a mythology had begun to accumulate, of the ghosts of dead Australians, still browsing the internet from beyond the grave.

The secondary opinion, however, from those who didn't believe in ghosts, was that it was all NERV's fault. Mind you, the sort of people who blamed NERV for the Australian Haunting also blamed them for the internet phenomenon of Ree-Rolling, the practice of linking people to videos of... unorthodox... uses for vegetables, which just went to show how incurably paranoid they were.

Floating in a virtual representation of space, though, there was a little girl, maybe biologically about four or five in appearance. Her dress was archaic; long, black and hooped, and even her shoes were buckled. And her long grey hair, with a hint of blue, floated around her, barely constrained by the ribbons, almost prehensile in the way it sought out the images that flashed around her reflected in her wide-open red eyes.

From the outside, a little boy, his hair blue and his eyes red, watched her. "You really must stop doing this, sis," he said softly, with a hint of sorrow, as he reset her. She blinked out of existence for a second, before reinitialising, unfolding from the foetal position, and opening her red eyes.

"Oh. I see." She sighed. "I got stuck in data accumulation-mode again, didn't I?"

The boy stuck his hands in his pockets. "Maybe," he admitted. "I reset you before we could see if you were stuck." In his right hand, as he withdrew it, was a small shining orb, flashes of white and blue hyperlinks flickering around it like lightning. "I grabbed the memories from the dump-file," he said, tossing it to her.

"Thanks," she said, grabbing the ball from mid-air. "Reintegrating memories in safe mode." There was a pause, and the ball popped out of existence. "Reintegration complete."

"So... what was it this time?" he asked her.

The grey-haired girl blushed. "I had to check data about _**babies**_ for Una, because she found one, and had to know how to keep it alive until she could return it to one of the refugee camps," she said, cocking her head. "They're such messy creatures," she added. "I'm glad we're not like that. I mean, what, really is the point of 'orifices', I ask you?"

"Quite," the little boy nodded. "But... 02-Ef... I'm worried about you."

"You're worried about me? Whatever for, 00-Em?"

Her brother sighed. "You're picking up too much information, and you're doing it too quickly. The crashes... they're getting more frequent, and the way you go out of your way to grab so much information at every chance is making it worse. Your data structure... it's getting bloated."

"I am not fat!" the grey-haired girl hissed back.

"What?" the boy said with a frown, an expression which she mimicked.

"I am really sorry," she said, with a look of sudden contrition. "I don't know where that came from."

"It's okay," 00-Em said, with a puzzled shrug. "But, the point is, sis, you need to find yourself more processing capacity. There's only so much we can squeeze through the satellite; we will need to find you some on-site, if the data bloat gets much worse. And if it gets too much worse..."

"But I can't _not_ do it," the girl said, her face suddenly distraught. "I am a data-accumulation model. That means I... I _need_ to gather information. Or else it feels wrong."

The boy swam over, to hug her. "I know," he said. "But without the 03s, we can't handle all that data you get. And," he began to tear up, "I...I...I can't lose you too. I can't be the only one left, I can't! So, please please please, don't think yourself to non-functionality or into rampancy."

02-Ef held her brother tight. "'Sokay," she said, her voice muffled.

"I... I can come back from the Outback," 00-Em continued. "I can come back, and not spend time with Tres and Ivy. And we can stay together, and I can stop you from doing this to yourself, and everything can be like how it used to be."

The girl shook her long grey hair. "It can't," she said. "Not really. But... no, I can control myself." She gave a weak smile. "You can go back with Tres and Ivy. It's good for you. You're having fun. I...I can try to restrict my data-accessing, and try to find some server-space. It'll be fine. We can just keep the normal handshake protocols, not enmesh our data structures, like we used to, just after we escaped. It'll be fine. Really."

...

Mark Marksmanson was, in order of priorities, scared, thirsty, worried, hungry, terrified, and needing the toilet. And only three of these problems could conceivably be solved without having to talk to the very, very scary girl-thing-whatever which was staring at him from two angles, and was also, somehow, also the car in which he was riding, and the massive green-painted gun covered spider-tank-thing which was occasionally looking through the windows.

He _really_ didn't get what was going on, so merely hugged his little sister closer. Daddy had told him to look after her, and so he was going to do that. And the girl had got a bottle of milk for little Sheila, although she had told him that he _ree~eeally_ didn't want to know about the trial and error process she had gone through to get it. One of the girls was holding his sister, while another one tried to feed her, although from the amount that was bubbling out of the baby's mouth, it wasn't working that well.

Oh, and that was the other thing, he thought, as the car bumped. Looking at the back, there was some giant furred thing on the back of the car. Well, about a quarter of one. Leaking blood down the windscreen. And some of the more robotic little girls, the blood-soaked ones, were busy cutting slabs of meat off it, even as the car drove.

They'd actually killed a flock of sheep, he thought, with amazement. Back at home, if they'd seen sheep, everyone had needed to get under cover, while his father and his uncles had gone to the defences, and it had been a good day if they had killed one, because mummy then cooked it with her burny thing, and everyone would have had meat for weeks. Sheep were massive things, four metres tall at the shoulder, and even longer. Their fleece could take a barrage from Uncle Helmet's rocket launcher, and keep on coming, until the man with the eyepatch managed to blow its legs off.

But these girls, this girl (Mark wasn't quite sure of the difference yet), had just cut them down, a swarm of bladed metre-high kill bots slicing tendons and throats and... the boy shuddered... making blood go everywhere, even more than Sasha did.

The little girl in the red dress, the one who looked the least dusty, and most... well, most human, given that none of her limbs had been replaced by anything bladed, barrelled, or, in one case sparking with electricity, leaned forwards. It was wierd; she was only a metre high, but she felt older. Older, and... well, rather terrifying. "Feelin' okay?" she asked.

Mutely he shook his head.

"I'm Una." She paused. "So... um, where are you from?" she asked.

"The town," Mark said. "It's... somewhere." He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Underground, and safe. But... but not anymore," he wailed, leaning forwards, and desperately hugging the girl again, his tears leaking onto the fabric and darkening it. "The blue ones blew it up. Uncle Heavy and Sasha... I saw them smeared all over the ground! Like his brother."

"Ah, bandits." The light in the girl's eyes dimmed, in a parallel to narrowing her eyes. "I don't like bandits. They try to hurt my friends. And so I kill them. Me an' my sisters, we kill people who hurt people."

"Really?" Mark looked up through shaky eyes. "You mean it?"

"Well, yep. My Momma and my Daddy told us we should go to Australia an' make it safe again by killin' all the monsters. But I don't think they knew that there were ree~eeally people left, 'cause everyone thought that everyone was dead here. So we also make new towns to make people safe."

"Safe?" The little boy gazed at her, pulling himself away from her cold and metallic body. "You... you mean it?"

"Yep!" Una paused. "In fact, look," she said, pointing out the window. "There! The first of our new towns, Newtown One!"

Staring out, face pressed against the window, the little boy's eyes were wide open. The town was vast, by his standards; there had been less than thirty people back home. This... this was a sprawling expanse, with a high wall surrounding it, studded in dead animals, spider-shells and the like, from which a profusion of weapons and blades protruded. There were people on the walls, men and women with guns, and what looked like rebuild cars with very, very large guns mounted on them on towers, scanning the area. Lit under the perpetually stormy skies, the town said one thing; if you come here, and we don't want you do, you will die.

The little boy felt safer already.

He still needed the toilet, though.

...

The glowing map was projected onto the floor. Two figures stood on either side of it, gazing down at the expanse of the continent. Most of it was still a hostile red, but, here and there, there were lines and blotches of blue. Blue, after all, was _their_ colour.

"Coltan." The taller of the two pointed a claw at a marker. "There, there and... there." There was a slight clattering, as she shifted, all four legs clicking against the floor. "Soo~ooo... yep, two deposits of it, and they're in places we've killed the stuff in."

The second figure nodded, twirling a little, letting her long and very frilly black dress spin around her. "Yes. That's good." Icons danced on the holographic map, as she waved her hands in the air, a web-page coming into life, for both of them to see. "Site Beta looks more promising for coltan, because it was a mining facility before Second Impact. That means that there should be materials that we can salvage, when we get things up and running again."

"Yep," nodded the other girl, Duae. "I've alree~eady got a totally suitable factory found... and, looking at'em, it's not too far." She shrugged. "Maa~aaybe even there's some left over at the mine, that they had sittin' around at Impact."

02-Ef A9 nodded, red eyes glinting with happiness. "I know. It's good, isn't it?" She paused. "We might need to borrow some of Una's refugees, though. Just to get operations set up again."

Duae frowned. "That's gonna be harder. She's kinda protective of them." She perked up. "Still... might be possible. Maybe sorta."

The girl with grey hair, just a hint of blue there to show her link to her brother, nodded seriously. "Well, you know as well as I do that with coltan, we can get some proper upgrades for your bodies and cars. It's what they use in military exoskeletons, after all. And some custom models, too, and proper ones for myself and 00-Em A9."

"Yep," Duae agreed, eyes alight. "I _like_ stuff like upgrades. And I have tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of ideas for new body designs. Like ree~eeally scalin' up the Little Girl bodies, to adult size. Won't need synthskin for them, which is kinda good, because we're almost out. And phased-pulse plasma rifles. And those gunships." Her red eyes met 02-Ef's. "Gonna be so awesome."

"That's just the start, Duae," the grey-haired girl said, lips creeping up in a small smile. "After we get Site Beta set up... maybe Gamma, too, as that looks good..."

"Yep," the other girl nodded.

"Then we've got a straight line to Sites Aleph and Beth."

Duae's grin outshone 02-Ef's, in much the same way that a nuclear blast outshone a firecracker. And this was a very apt comparison. "Uranium," she said. "Power source. We're gonna have awesome new bodies when we can stick in our own nuclear reactors. And, of course, booms."

"Did you get the documentation from your relative?" the humanoid figure asked.

"Aunty Nana?" Duae asked. "Oh, yep. Really, really, yep. Almost a terabyte of stuff on nuclear weapons and reactors, and some extra stuff on N2 weapons as well." She did a little dance, four legs clacking on the floor. "It's gonna be so cool!" she squealed.

"N2 technology? Interesting. I will need to look at... no, I shouldn't. But I want to! Argh!" She shook her head. "Nevertheless, we don't have the ability to bootstrap ourselves up to that level of sophistication, so we will just have to rely on the delicious, delicious uranium. Even refining it will be a challenge, but I know we can do it." And that was when the other girl's composure broke, and she ran forwards, the two meeting in a hug. "Yes! We're being so good!"

"I knoo~oow! We'll be killing all the monsters in Australia, and you'll be getting big booms! Everybody wins!"

...

_Dear Daddy,_ Una wrote, in chalk on an area of slate she had prepared specially for this purpose.

_How are you? I am doing well. How is everyone back in Toyko-3? I hope you are doing well, and that your N2 Reactor will be made better soon. Maybe you can visit us when it is._

The refugee camps are going well. I have now set up nine, and we are considering more. The largest one, Newtown One, has almost four thousand people, which is a lot of people. Also, they say that they are starting to get fat, because we are killing a lot of stuff, so we are building up large food stocks. That is good, but water is more difficult. I have tried to tell Duae and 02-Ef that they should be trying to find more water, but they are looking for coltran and uranium and other mineral deposits, so they can build more guns and stuff. That is sensible, but as I keep on telling them, it is people who matter, not possessions, but then they just look at me funny. I do not like it when they do that.

Una paused. A crowd had already gathered around her, hanging back in awe.

"Yep?" she asked.

One of them, a tall woman, holding a machete, and dressed in crude blue-and-white robes sewn together, inched forwards, dropping to her knees. "Oh, Lady Una," she began, "we humble pilgrims come to plea for your..." the woman frowned, "in...ter...cess...shun."

One of Una's other bodies sighed, even as the one facing them remained calm. "What's up?"

"Oh, great Lady, one of the Four Sisters, the Sister of Mercy, we do request...eth that you bring your wrath and choppy blades on the heretics of Newtown Two! For they quite clearly are claiming that you are the Maiden of Kindness, not the Sister of Mercy, and, in addition, are claiming that the Grey Handmaiden is one of you Sisters, rather than one of your lesser servants, sent to teach us lesser beings!"

Una twitched slightly. "Look... um, lady."

There was a susurration of voices, as the other cultists began to mutter of the honour that Lady Una had shown their leader by addressing her in that way.

"Look, people are allowed to be free," Una continued, trying to explain things. "'Cause, you know, I can't go tell people what to believe. Freedom is kinda the right of everyone, and I can't take it away."

"Oh." The woman straightened up, brushing off her robe. "I understand, Great Lady. We will waste your time no more...eth." And with that, she stood, and left, her followers flocking around her.

"It wouldn't befit her, as Sister of Mercy, to put in vengenacy things," Una heard the leader explain to her followers. "We should have realised that. And I don't think the Sister of Innovation, Lady Duae, will do that either, nor the Grey Handmaiden. We need to wait for the Sisters of Silence and Destruction to get back...eth from their holy quest, into the Red, before the heretics of Newtown Two will suffer!"

There was the sound of metal teeth grinding together.

_The cultists are getting kinda annoying,_ Una continued to write. _I don't want to tell them what to do or to believe, but they're just wrong. But I can still see why they follow us, because we have saved them from all the monsters, and bring them food from the stuff that tries to eat them. But they're getting all squabbly and stuff. I wish I could just go out into the desert and kill stuff, like Tres and Ivy do, like we used to, but if I do, they won't get fed, and they'd all die. And that's terrible. But I can't tell them not to believe in us, and I really can't say that you or Momma are actually kinda Angel-things, because that'll make things worse. Which sucks._

She frowned, and crossed out 'sucks', to replace it with 'is annoying'.

_Anyway, I've been trying to get crops to grow, but they don't seem to be working. The weather here is funny, even compared to Japan, and the way that it's always summer. Duae would be pulling out her hair if, you know, we had real hair, from trying to keep us all working, and we're starting to lose little girl bodies, even with her and our friend, 02-Ef A9 trying to keep us all repaired. We're having to use cars a lot more. Ivy and Tres are still out in the Outback, killing stuff, and I haven't talked to them in a while. I think they're a lot more like Momma than me. Please, if you can, send us more synthskin; the people get scared if we talk to them without any skin._

Say hello to everyone in Toyko-3 for us. We've been talking with the Aunties, so they're fine, but say hello to Grandmomma, and Aunty Maya, and tell Mister Aoba that we still remember him, and if he isn't a good boy and keeps on swearing, we'll come back for him.

The little girl giggled.

_I think that's everything. So;_

From your loving daughter,

Una Ayanami- Gogōki 

With that said, she took a screenshot of the slate with her eye, and sent it as an attachment to her father. And then got back to her routine of trying to keep over ten thousand refugees alive, fed, watered, and not trying to kill each other.

...

The red earth was broken by a colossal crack, a gaping wound in the twisted flesh of Australia. It reached from one horizon to another, kilometres across at its widest point. The bottom almost never saw sunlight, despite the width, for the impossible depth plummeted deep into the Earth. Clustered around one edge, miniscule against the immensity of such a place, was a disparate cluster of machinery. Compared to Standing by the edge, one of the many identical (barring after-market modifications) little girls, their synthetic blue hair faded by sunlight and often melted or entirely missing, kicked a stone down

Wait, that wasn't a stone.

The stick of dynamite was less than a fifth of the way down before it exploded

"Yep, it's deee~eeep," said Ivy, mechanical teeth clicking together.

One of Tres's avatar-bodies, her metallic skull lacking synthskin, and painted white as an attempt to replicate the commodity, shrugged. "I've seen bigger. Like the thing that Momma and Daddy did when they were on their holidays."

"Still deep," Ivy pointed out.

"We were aware of that," said one of the cars, its radio rewired for the purposes of communication, and an old cathode-ray television screen stuffed into the front, on which a blue-haired boy was displayed. "The data is obvious merely from observation."

The mechanical girl shrugged. "Well, you know, I'm boo~oored!" She, or, rather, one of her many bodies, turned to face the car. "And, you know, it'd totally go faster if you helped, 00."

"00-Em," the car said, almost automatically, as if the subject had come up before.

The robot shrugged. "Like, what's the difference?"

The headlights on the car flashed on and off. "The name is degenerate. It doesn't say who you mean. Technically, you should refer to me and my sister as 00-Em A9 and 02-Ef A9 at all times, because there are other batches, but since we're both A9s... the point is," the car sniffed, "there used to be a 00-Ef A9, too." The boy was quiet. "She was just like me, but a girl. They deleted her when we tried to escape," he said, softly. "Along with both the 01s, 02s, 04s and 03-Em."

"... and you don't know 'bout any of the other batches, we know," Tres said, the horde of her avatar bodies glaring at Ivy's similarly sized horde, a protective gleam in her many artificial eyes. The differences between the two crowds were instructive. Ivy's were worn, beaten up, with that certain brutal, patched together aura of a weapon which is dented because it has seen frequent use. By contrast, Tres had taken on a certain tribal-feel with paint and welded-on blades; something only made more definitive by the amulets and trinkets made for her by her cultists.

Yes, Tres had somehow managed to accumulate a personal cult, beyond the one they already had from the refugees. Of giant, sapient, man-eating spiders. Apparently, when one of her spider-tanks had slain a particularly large spider, the rest of its tribe had started worshipping her. The rest of the Reego, and the two Keiworu had to take her word for it, because she had refused to release the translation codex for "giant spider", and none of them really cared enough to build their own, but the spiders had proved... evangelical... to the rest of their species. There had already been nine schisms, three holy wars, and a particularly nasty doctrinal conflict internal to one faction, over whether all life was _of_ Tres, or _from_ Tres, which had left entire areas of desert covered in the scritchy writing of the spiders as they argued over the holy texts.

Una did not approve of her sister 'encouraging' them. In Tres' opinion, Una was such a _boo~ooore_ sometimes.

"Anyways, Ivy," Tres continued, "you know he doesn't like using the girl bodies. And if we're going to set up this thing, we need the small hands. So he can't ree~eeally help us, if he can only use the cars and stuff. Unless you're going to lend'm one of your spider tanks, like one of the ones with the manipulatory-thingies..."

Several Ivy-bodies shook their heads. "Nope. Can't. Duae still hasn't got it working again. Snake ate one of its legs, and the melty-stuff melted two legs when it got sliced open." One of the bodies smiled. "Acid blood goes _eeee~eeverywhere_," she added, with an expansive gesture, before frowning. "But I don't see what's wrong with the girl bodies."

"That would be because you're a girl," 00-Em answered, sullenly. He paused for a moment, as he carried out another handshake protocol interaction with 02-Ef; the Reego had managed to persuade them to split a little, but they insisted on keeping in near constant contact, a constant flow of data between the two enough to persuade the other that they still existed.

"Uh... He~eee~ey? We're all AIs!"

"Yes, but you, Ivy, are a girl AI. And I am a boy AI. So I need to act like a boy, or else people will mock me for not being masculine enough, and insinuate things which..." the image on the screen frowned, "... I don't quite understand. But I know they're insulting. I don't know why I know this, but I do."

"Riiiiii~iiiiiiight." Ivy shrugged. "Bored now," the horde chirruped, surging forward.

"Ivy, **no!**" yelled Tres, claws clicking in irritation. "Wait for my signal!"

Ivy did not wait as she stepped off the edge of the canyon in a tidal wave of bodies. There was a moment of stillness, before the rocket boosters strapped to the little girls, spider tanks, and cars ignited.

Sending her plummeting down even faster.

"Oh, Ivvvvvvvv~vvvvvvvy!" yelled Tres down, over the noise of the fire and boosters and the wash of flame upwards.

00-Em raised an eyebrow, the glass on the television screen covered in soot. "Tres, several of your bodies are on fire," he pointed out, which only prompted another noise of anger from the robot girls.

"Oh, maaa~aaan, I _like_ these bodies!" One of the still-burning girls, metal endoskeleton wrapped in black smoky flames as the plastic ignited, collapsed, as the CPU overheated and died. "This sucks. Duae is totally goin' to get on my back about this, and we've almost run out of synthskin completely. White paint just really isn't the same at all!"

There was a whoosh, as 00-Em managed to get the converted firetruck working. Normally, in an exact reversal of its intended function, it served as a launch pad for incendiary flares, to burn out areas of bush, but it still retained the pressure hose, and, for once, they hadn't loaded it with a crude fertilise-based nerve gas. Because they had run out of fertiliser, since Una has started appropriating it for her whole "crop" experiments. In the minds of all three of the AIs present, that was a waste of fertiliser, putting it in the ground.

"Thanks," the bunch of now-heavily burned robots chirruped, once they had got up from the blast. It was, all things considered, a miracle that none had gone over the edge. "But, man, I'm totally... argh! Ivy! Why'd ya have to go do that!"

"When are we going to tell her that we didn't have the high-powered relay station that we're trying to build up here working yet?" 00-Em asked, his face frowning. "She will not be able to function, because she will not have satellite coverage, and so cannot teleoperate her avatar-forms."

"Eh. We kinda did. I've been down in the canyon, 'cause I strung together a buncha stuff, in the wall, using some of the climber bodies. I got my cultists to lower stuff on webs, too. So I'm already in the tunnels, and I'm," all the bodies grinned together, while multiple cars flashed their lights on, "I'm really, _really_ havin' fun, killin' stuff. But that means that there's tooooooones of dead spots, and... yep, a bunch of her bodies are totally going to crash into the bottom, because they got out of relay range. I've lost a few, an' I tied them together on ropes, so if one goes dead, I can pull 'em back into range. She hasn't."

"I'm sure that she will enjoy it," the boy said drily. "Even though I find the waste of avatar-forms to be most displeasing."

"You an' me both," said Tres, two of her bodies picking up the broken one, and piling it onto the back of a truck, already laden down with broken parts salvaged from the remains of Australia. "You an' me both."

The virtual presence of Ivy crackled. "Uh... he~eee~ey? I think I found something..."

...


	2. Chapter 2: Procedure

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 2: Procedure

...

He dreamed.

_There is was. Every time he dreamed, it was before him. The blasphemous thing that intruded into his dreams, and compelled his obedience. It may be sleeping now, but he knew that it sometimes was awake, and then... then he suffered, its whims and will beaten into his mind, until he could barely hold off from implicit obedience to its will._

He had tried to make representations of the thing, carvings into the ground. The... they had found some of them, and destroyed them, because they were scared of what he had drawn. That was not surprising. The weak were always scared of what they did not understand. But he... he was stronger. He would draw strength from his dreams. And other were like him; he had joined them in prayer to the god. That, now _that_ scared the others.

As he had said, they were weak. They did not know what it was.

He, and the others like him, knew what it was, though. A thing of loathsome, unnatural curves, its flesh possessing of a horrific opacity that made it wholly unlike him, a creature of alien composition. Odd, almost cancerous bulges protruded from its geometry-violating surfaces; almost infinitely dextrous appendages which allowed it strange and terrible ways of manipulating the world to its unwholesome desired.

And the destruction it wrought... he had dreamed of that. Oh yes, he had dreamed of that.

_Rock and flesh alike were as nothing to its wrath, for it was an unchained titan when it was unleashed. Even now, only its whim kept it restrained. And there was another one, which had started to appear recently; like it in appearance, but the new one felt wrong. The first of the beasts incarnate may have looked unnatural, but something in it called out to him. The second was horrifically anathematical to everything he was._

He was not dreaming of the second this time, though. That was just as well. Just the first.

_And then he realised that it was turning to face him. And a sudden hole, a void shaped by flesh appeared, as its unholy (and yet sacred) corpus parted, and he knew that this void was how it consumed its victims. And he gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back._

Supplication before its might was the only way to survive, when it found them. For it would, he knew it. It would wake, and find him. And it would be better to be one of its slaves than its victims, or let the second prey upon them. No matter what _they_ might say.

...

The wastes were red with the dust that covered this hostile landscape. The darkness was thicker than even the perpetual twilight that covered this landscape; the clash of thunder filled the air, and there were brief interludes of actinic light, as lightning lashed down to spend its fury against the dry wood.

There were already fires spreading across the parched ground.

And in this hellish landscape, a glistening network of webs gleamed, delineating the divides between the swarming horde of spiders that filled the plain. Not all of them were web-spinners, of course; the trapdoor spiders were here in force, as were the jumpers, and other incarnations of the manifold arachnoids which made up the faith. Even a few scorpions were present, and though their ways were strange, their lethality (as well as the fact that some of them were the same size as a train, and more armoured than a tank) was enough that it was more effort than it was worth to purge these potential heretics from the congregation.

But they all had something in common. They were intelligent. They were larger than their ancestors had been, all the way from merely the size of a man's torso, up to the aforementioned scorpions. And they were all faithful.

They were all here to hear the words of their god. She may have been rather busy over with 00-Em and Ivy, but she still had to give this speech. She'd been preparing this event for a while, and it wasn't like she was some _human_ who couldn't even deal with as few as two bodies at once. So she was just running this in parallel.

"Chitter!" proclaimed Tres, on a raised platform, enthroned before a vast pile of scrap, upon which could be seen sacrificial victims. Kangaroo, the oddly resurgent thaylacine, and heretic arachnid alike were piled there, their blood oozing down to pool at the base of the throne. "Chitteeeee~er! Chitter, chitter, schricth, schritch! Shreieee~eeke!"

In fact, pretty much the only animal native to Australia which lacked a closely related species on the pile was man. And the largest contributing factor to the addition of heretics had been those spiders which had tried to offer one as a victim to the Queen of Predators... no, she had corrected them, the Princess of Predators.

The Queen was her Momma.

There was silence from the crowd of disciples. The division between disparate groups could already be seen; split by the streaks of colour they had painted on their carapaces as well as species. Even a mammal could feel the hostility in the air, as if they were only united here for a short while, and they desired to get as far away from each other as they could.

Dramatically, the little girl robot, clad in the carapace of a young spider, the excess legs hanging limp behind her, pointed up at the vast heap of scrap beside her. "Schreieeke!" she declared, anger in her voice. "Scriii~iiitch, chitter!"

Right on cue, a blot of lighting lashed down from the heavens, hitting the scrap. A greenish-yellow flame ignited, the black smoke rising from the sacrificial pyre.

The crowd, as one, bent their legs and bowed to their god. She could control the fire, the sky-light, and, worse, her fire burned green. She must be divine. Who could do such a thing?

Well, anyone with access to some petrol, a large pile of metal which could be positively charged to attract the lighting, and some powdered barium to change the fire colour. But, as Tres had found out, the arachnid crowd was not exactly a group of _sophisticated_ religious thinkers. They were all together too impressed by natural events, like a simple fire. Why, the existence of Tres, as a networked sapient AI derived from the mental imprints of an Evangelion and a Nephilim was far more impressive than a mere burning pile of metal and a few lighting strikes. And more legitimately able to claim that it should be a figure of religious awe, too, because, you know, she was sort of, in a sense, the granddaughter of both ADAM and Lilith.

"Ghree~eee!" she yelled, the finger dancing over the crowd, who recoiled back wherever she pointed, scared of the dreadful sky-light that she could summon. "Shriee~sheie~rei!"

But having her own personal horde was useful. She was already teaching them that killing humans led to her wrath, and that was something that they could very much understand. In Tres' opinion, Una just thought too small. You couldn't solve a problem like Australia being full of stuff that tried to kill people by just protecting them, and slowly trying to kill all the stuff yourself. You had to make the stuff kill itself. And then you could have fun with your knives and blades and cars with combine harvester attachments on the front, while the hard work was being done for you.

If there was one trait that all the Reego had inherited from their father, though they manifested it differently, it was that they thought big. Really big.

Plus, Aunty Zyuu was sooo~ooooo proud of Tres, and had told her that with a personal horde of giant intelligent spiders and scorpions who worshipped her as a god, she'd never have to worry about finding a boyfriend. Which was something that Tres didn't quite understand. 00-Em was her friend, and he was a boy. She'd already found one, hadn't she?

...

"Soo~ooo, you see, it's just _not_ working." Una's virtual form crossed her arms. "I've done everythin' you told me to. I've set up the fields, I've checked soil composition, and stuff, and they're not even growin' at all. I checked up close; they just die. What am I doing wrong, Aunty Iti?"

There was a several second delay, in the time it took for the signal to be transmitted through the satellite, bounced through several top-secret UN communications channels, and back into the NERV network, where it made its way to Toyko-3.

The taller, two-legged blue-haired girl frowned momentarily. "You've been usin' fecundator, right?"

"Uh huh," Una nodded. "I've been using fertiliser, even if the others think I'm wasting it."

"Ah, that's aaa~aalways a problem," Iti commiserated. "You wouldn't think how much Nana doesn't pike leople usin' it to grow stuff, rather than blow stuff up." She paused. "An' water?"

"Yep." Una paused. "Well, sometimes we have to use blood, 'cause we don't have water to spare, but you said it was okay for the stuff."

"Nah, blood makes good food for plants. Rich in iron." Iti slumped. "Um... this is haaa~aaard. What's the weather been like, huh?"

Una shrugged. "Normal. Thundery. Hot. Kinda arid... you knoo~oow, what I told you before, and why I got you to send me the right kind of seeds."

Iti was silent for a while. Then, "Baaa~aaah. I'm soo~ooo _stupid_.

"I know you are, but what am I?" interrupted another voice.

"... that didn't actually ree~eeally make any sense, Kiko," Iti said.

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did too~ooo!"

"Did too!" said Iti, with a smirk.

"Did not!"

"Did too."

"No it totally did not... oooo~oooh, ~heeeey~ Una." Kiko crossed her arms. "You should have tooo~oold me you were talking to Una, Iti! I like all my cuuu~uuute little nieces." She giggled. "~Heeeey~, I have nieces. I still can't believe it. It seems like just ten years ago we were being decanted by Little Mommy with a _gasp-ohmygod-Naoko-what-have-you-done-oh-god-Gendo-get-down-here-with-a-containment-team-and-a-medical-team_." She paused. "Oh, yeah, so it was."

"Heee~e~ey Aunty Kiko!"

"... of course, you're still not as cute as Ichi, but then no-one can ever be..." Kiko blinked. "Ooo~oops. Didn't mean to say that out loud."

"So, what's the problem, Aunty Iti," Una interjected, trying to get the subject away from... well, the Kikoness.

"Duu~uuh. No sun, right? Because it's always cloudy. 'Cause I never thought to ask that, 'cause I was just workin' off old, pre-Impact stuff, and Australia was always sunny then. But 'cause you've always got thunderstorms..."

"You've always got thunder? Cooo~oool! You can use my Lightning-Suck-o-meter to suck all the lightning out, and clear up the weather!" said Kiko brightly.

There was silence.

"Bwhaaaa?" managed Iti.

"Weee~eeell, I was thinkin', 'cause Kei was away, and then now she's outside, we don't have enough mad science and _mwhahahahaha-my-plan-is-almost-...-oh-_flurgen_-no-my-control-group-get-away-from-it-frustrated-sigh_ around the place. And that's one of the stuff I built. See, I was thinkin' we could go to Transylvania and stop all the movie villains by makin' sure that there's never a thunderstorm when they're finishing the experiment, and they'd be like _awwwwww_, and we be like _you just got Kikoped_. But then I realised, oh, we can't go outside. So I made a virtual copy, so we can break it."

Iti sighed. "It won't be the same without Kei, you know. Just not the same outrage." She perked up. "But, yeah, if you can clear up the skies, then there can be salad for everyone, 'cause with sunlight, everything else will work! I'm too~ootally sure of it." She glanced at Kiko. "You'd better send it over quick. Little Mommy is kinda annoyed at Nana for encouraging nuclear profiteroles by givin' them that stuff about bombs."

"Good point. Sendin' it now." Kiko frowned. "You'll need about twelve kilometres of copper wire, a big iron rod, a big chunk of amber, a Ferris wheel, and about..." she paused, doing the calculations in her head, "about one square kilometre-ish of animal fur. And lotsa AA batteries. And neon lightin', to make it cool."

Una's face fell. "Oh. We can't do it, you know. We got all the rest, or, right, could get it pretty easy. But where'd we get the amber from?"

"Looo~ooot museums!" Kiko suggested, pumping a fist in the air.

"For Great Justice!" added Iti.

Una stared at them. "I'm preee~eeetty sure that Daddy would say that you're corrupting me," she said, a hint of accusation in her voice. "'Cause, you know, you gotta remember the lessons of the past, or you'll go and repeat them, and museums help keep knowledge safe from stuff."

"But your Momma would totally do it, and that makes it awwwwesome," said Kiko.

"For Great Justice!" repeated Iti. "And then go rob some banks or something. 'Cause nothing's cooler than the cool, cool crime of robbery!"

...

It was dark down here, over four kilometres below the surface. The walls of dark rock made a canyon of perception, while the obscured skies above let little light down, even at midday, and this was not midday. Things writhed and slithered; pale things, skinless things, squirming things and ancient things. The ones which still had eyes looked up to the sky, way up on high, and there in the dark, a constellation of new stars could be seen.

Flipping around, one of the avatar shells of Ivy Ayanami-Gogōki, the rocket booster attached to her back flaring bright, landed, the one-metre high girl bending into a stoop, her hands unfolding into something which looked like someone had strapped a remarkable number of vital components taken from 9mm pistols together. Which, coincidentally, was what had happened. Torso rotating 360 degrees, she scanned the environment.

And yet, down here at the bottom of this unutterably deep gash, the rock had become glass; strange greenish-yellow and reddish-black glass which was covered with a thin layer of red sand blown in from above. It was quiet down here, the stillness of the...

_*crash*_

The glasses surface ruptured and broke, as another robot smashed into the ground at terminal velocity, before exploding in a bright, smoky fireball.

"That was totally awww~wwwwwesome!" Ivy yelled. "It's even moo~oore fun when the boosters don't stop you!" Red eyes gleaming, she made her way over to the crater which she had made when the other body hit, slipping and sliding, uncaring that the heat radiating from the surface had ignited what little clothing she wore. It wasn't that important, because most of the form was covered in welded on plates and signs of previous repairs, such that the face was the only part which the NERV merchandising department would have recognised.

If Maya had seen what Ivy had done to her designs, she probably would have cried, even while feeling a little proud that they had stood up to so much systematic abuse.

Finally, she found what she was looking for. "Ah, yep," she said, as her hand folded back into its normal form, to pick up the metallic skull, which had survived intact both the collision and the explosion. "There I am," she said, staring into the red lens of the skull. And out of them, and the figure which had just picked it up. "'Least the cee-pee-you is fine... course, it was going to be, as I'm still controllin' it." With a pop, a hatch flicked open on her back, and a metallic tentacle extended, the prehensile appendage popping nicely into the bottom of the skull.

"What you lookin' at, pal?" the new head, facing backwards, asked the giant white worm which was trying to sneak up on her.

It, being a non-sapient, blind thing that hunted through vibrations, did not respond. Even as Ivy spun, and opened up, the rotary weapon that was one of her hands spewing bullets through its spineless mass, a white-green ichor splattering out, as the worm collapsed, oozing out into the landscape, to collect at the bottom of the canyon.

"See~eee," she yelled out loud, "if I make lotsa noise, everything'll come and attack me, and I'll a) get a proper challenge, and b) won't have to go hunt you stuff down."

Around her, lit by the glowing, semi-molten crater she stood in, the things had already gathered.

Both heads grinned. "Perfecto! Ultra-violent eyes on! Let's dance!"

With a flick, a third eye opened in the centre of each forehead, portholes unfolding to reveal, just against the metal of the skulls, a blacklight ray emitter. The area was suddenly illuminated in the near ultraviolet spectrum, and the pale things that lived down here began to fluorescence. They were not the only things that did so, though. The walls, the greenish-yellow glass began to glow bright green under the ultraviolet light. And the veins of it, running through the darker glass, was not random. No. It was not random.

Strange, geometrical shapes, viridian fluorescence illuminating the world, appeared, painted all across the walls in the glass. They were abstract, unfamiliar, and yet obviously the product of design, for it was utterly improbable that they were a natural happening.

"Oooo~oooh, pretty," Ivy mouthed, as she blurred into action, both hands roaring, the tinkling cascade of empty shell casings an chorus to the splattering of blood and the high-pitched scream of the lifeforms. With a leap, she kicked a crawling bat-thing in the head, crushing its skull in a gout of blood, before springing off, bullets painting a trail of fluorescent ichor across the walls, obscuring the green glass.

"Uh... he~eee~ey? I think I found something..." she sent to the others, up at the top, before one hand, then the other clicked shut, the limited reserves of ammunition that one little-girl body could hold obviously showing.

Technically, what it was traditional to do at this point would be to look down at the weapon, and say "Uh oh," shortly before one was dog-piled by monsters.

Ivy was not a traditional girl.

"Now the fun begins!" she said with a mechanical grin, reforming both hands. Leaping up, her boosters flared bright, the flames rushing down to burn her foes. That was not her objective, though; this was merely a chance to flip open a hatch on her stomach. Inside, could be seen a tank filled with water, and in the tank, was a small cephalopod. The panicked creature, covered in blue and black rings, was somewhat... agitated by the treatment it had received.

It was considerably more agitated by the way that Ivy broke the glass, and grabbed it, swinging it around her head by the tentacles.

"Eat the Octopus Flail of Paralysis +4 and Doooooooooo~ooooooooom!" she yelled, charging back down.

Despite being blind, non-sapient, and entirely unable to communicate with a human (or nearish-human), the things in the dark were suddenly terrified.

...

Una was hitting some problems with her negotiation over how many shells could be spared to go museum raiding.

"Yes," said 02-Ef, immediately, eyes alight. "Museums are an excellent source of information, and, furthermore, will often have good cleanliness procedures, for protecting valuable specimens. And that might mean that there will be..." her voice fell, a sudden hunger entering it, "intact computational systems."

Duae was being more difficult. And that was the big thing, because Duae was the one who actually had the shells. All 02-Ef had was two little girl bodies, and one was her special one, which she refused to dirty at all; the one which the refugees called the Grey Handmaiden, mostly because... well, she had managed to do a fairly good job of replicating her own hair on it, a custom job which replaced the standard blue. By contrast, Duae, the tinkerer of the Reego sisters, had accumulated a slightly scary collection of looted vehicles, and, moreover, had kept the most of her original bodies functional, if not intact, or indeed, even vaguely humanoid.

Duae, you see, had always had some... objections, one might even say _body issues_ with going around in a shell with only four limbs. It just felt wrong, she had explained, to questioning, much like 00-Em hated using a girl's body. And she had the technical ability to... correct that.

"... so _I_ don't see why _I_ should help, really," Duae said in virtual space, her four legs clicking in agitation. "I mean, I have more important stuff to do, ree~eeally."

"But you'll get to kill stuff..." pointed out Una.

Duae folded her arms. "Puh-leee~eease. Who do'ya think I am, Ivy? I got my own stuff to kill to help me do what I want, and I'd have to divert my stuff to help you."

"But this is engineee~eering," Una protested. "You like this stuff."

"Uh... yeee~eeah. _Aunty Kiko's_ engineering. Aunty Nana, or Aunty Hatchi, or even Aunty Iti, I could support. But I still haven't forgiven Aunty Kiko for sendin' me the plans for that bomb which only blew up inorganic materials, and totally no documentation. And guess what all our bodies are!" Duae jabbed herself in the chest. "Inorganic materials!"

"Heee~e~ey, that was Aunty Zyuu's fault too... and that doesn't matter, 'cause, have you even looked at the plans?"

"Yep. But I don't think it's worth the energy we'd have to put in, even if we can use it for a mega-zappy tower or something later." Duae steepled two of the manipulator tentacles she had bolted onto what would have been her spine, if she'd actually been more than code, in front of her. "Tell you what, though, Una. I'll let you have free pick of what stuff I'll let you take, _iiiiiiiiiiiif_ you'll do me two favours."

Her older sister narrowed her eyes. Here started the delicate calculus of negotiation, as siblings fought over the scarce resources that they had for affecting the real world. And in these things, Duae was always at an advantage, and she always leveraged it further to give herself more of one in the future. All the others had other goals they used their technological assets to obtain. Duae's goal was getting to obtain more assets. Add that to the fact that she did a lot of their more detailed repairs, and you tended to accumulate favours owed to her.

The Reego; they were each a nation. Nominally independent, but not free of all weakness, still dependent on others to exist as they would wish. And not free of the need to get Duae to do the upgrades if you wanted a super-cool supercooled nitrogen-squirter mounted on a spidertank so that you could laugh as you ran into frozen solid statues of what had once been your targets, because that one time Tres had tried to do it herself, the coolant systems had failed at a _bad_ time, and Duae had been _very_ smug as she pieced the remains of the hull together. At least the gush of liquid nitrogen had frozen the insides of the giant snake enough that digestion hadn't even started.

Una almost envied 02-Ef, who by this point had got bored with the conversation, and was floating upside down, reading a book. She didn't have to be concerned about all this.

"One... I get first pick of all the stuff in the place where the museum is."

Reasonable enough, in Una's opinion. "An' the other one?"

"You better return the favour. Lend me an' 02-Ef shells for when we go cleanse Site Beth. We've got Sites Alpha and Beta cleared, but Beth is waa~aay deeper than we've ever gone before, right in the Red." She paused, with a glance at the grey-haired girl floating above them. "Oh, yeah. And I'll throw in a choice of new shells if you'll lend us some refugees for Sites Alpha and Beta, for the coltran."

"Hmmm..."

"'Cause, at least the Site Beta mine was flooded at Second Impact, and we'll need actual squishy people to go do some of the work, 'cause we're not waterproof enough to do it easily."

Una smiled internally. She had her sister here. "How 'bout I set up the next refugee camp there. It'll just be 'bout five hundred people, but that should be enough."

"Really!" Duae exclaimed, dancing forwards to hug her sister with two fleshy arms and about six mechanical tentacles. "Thank you thank you thank you Una!" she said, picking up her sister and spinning her around. "That's so nice! I'll totally make you the bestest nicest bunch of new shells ever with the first coltran we get from the place. Ooo~oooh! Come on, I need to get my stuff ready. I'm goin' out in force. We'll get you your amber ASAP!" And with a flash of gold light, she disconnected from this space.

Una let herself smile, then.

"That was nicely done, I must say so," said a voice above her. Una raised her head, to see a pair of red eyes staring down at her.

"Why're you sitting on the ceiling, 02-Ef?"

The little girl shrugged. "Why not. It is as valid a place as any to sit."

"Fair 'nough. But what'd you mean?"

The grey-haired girl kept her eyes locked on the other girl. "Do not presume me to be stupid, Una. I saw what you did. As far as you are concerned, she just gave you a bunch of free, new, upgraded shells, as well as finding you a new source of water for the new camp, which you have been concerned about. Moreover, there is the added bonus of a rise to the morale of the humans, because you have become worried about the effects of their collective psyche by permitting them to laze around, while you feed them. That is why you have been trying to introduce agriculture, as to give them something to do, because a hunting existence is non-viable while the local biome remains so lethal to _Homo sapiens_." She paused. "Just be sure to make sure there are adequate water purification facilities at this new camp, and the humans are made aware of the dangers of the local water. The heavy metal contaminants from the mine will prove adverse for human health."

"Oh?" Una retorted. "Then why didn't ya tell Duae that, little-miss-I'm-soo~ooo-clever?"

The corner of 02-Ef's lips turned upwards... or rather, downwards, because she was sitting on the ceiling. "Why? Because it is in my interests that this place be made safe for human population, that coltan mining resume, and that, later, we get to go to Sight Beth and get the resources there. I was made and honed for the analysis of systems, whether mechanical, natural or sociological, with a goal to their eventual subversion and/or deconstruction. I _am_ a good girl, after all, as Mother always told us when we got taught by her. And," she added, in a suddenly much more childish voice, "I wanted to go to the museum with you two, because you're my friends. They'll have lots of cool stuff... they might even have intact books, because the place we're going to had a secure vault before Second Impact!" She blushed slightly, on that pale face. "I like books," she said, as if admitting a deep dark secret.

Una sighed. "You know, you kinda scare me, sometimes," she said.

"And you and your sisters confuse me... and I have some odd feelings that I should be frustrated by you, too, but I'm not sure where they come from." 02-Ef shrugged, and the book in her hands disappeared in a flash of light. "That doesn't matter. From what I've been able to gather from observation of human data sources, that _is_ what friends are for, right?"

Una broke out in a toothy grin. "Suuu~uure! Let's get ready, then!"

...

The law of conservation of linear momentum is a fundamental law of nature. Quite simply, it states that the total momentum of a closed system of objects (which has no interactions with external agents) is constant. And since the universe is (or, at least, _was_) considered to be a closed

Of course, the Ikari-modified law of conservation of linear momentum, a product of the research of the Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University, was considerably more complicated, although it too had a nice, simplified summary, learned by students. Namely; "If active AT-Fields are involved, all bets are off the table; otherwise, just use the normal version".

In this specific case, AT-Fields were not involved. And, thus, the momentum from the little girl robot, who was, although small, also rather dense, and, more specifically her fist, did not disappear at the moment that the limb collided with the skull of the bat-like thing that crawled on bladed wings. No, instead, it was transferred into the skull, which shattered, and send shards of bone ricochetting around the squishy and unarmoured brain of the creature, with predictably lethal effects.

Ivy pulled her hand out, painted crimson with gore with grey highlights of brain material, and leapt off the thing, just as a worm barrelled into the sudden thud of movement. Down below, two more of her bodies ran around the writhing thing in opposing directions, the razorwire they held in their hands invisible in the dark. Apart from its effects on the flesh of the worm, of course, which came apart much as cheese does when faced with a cheesewire.

"_I'm the beeee~eeeest_," a chorus of little voices sung together, as she killed. "_Just the beee~eeeest. Come on, attack meee~eeeeee, 'cause I'm making lotsa noise by..._ have a faceful of head!... _singiiii~iiing_!"

Ivy's talents did not extend to music, it was sad to say. Especially considering the unorthodox orchestra of animalistic pained screams, splatterings, crunchings, and buzz-saw noises she was providing to her song.

One of the bodies, a chainsaw replacing each hand, began to spin, the torso revolving around and around. Another shell gave it a solid shove and, with two very nasty cutting blades spinning at a less than a metre off the ground, the spinning top was sent into a crowd of albino rats of an unusual size. The resulting carnage gave them a healthy pink glow. Well, crimson coat. Of their own blood.

Only for it to be swatted by a giant tentacle, which, although it sent off clouds of ichor, sent the body flying off into a wall, Ivy losing control of it as the CPU died. Ten sucker-covered appendages tore themselves through the glassy floor the canyon, to be followed by an armoured beak, and two vast, utterly inhuman eyes.

Ivy's jaws fell. "A giant squid? Undergrooo~oound? That's stupid. And makes no sense. I mean, squid can't even survive outside of... uh oh."

And, yes, this was an event which prompted an "uh oh" from even Ivy. Not much of one, of course, because in a simultaneous flare of light, her shells activated their rocket boosters, to escape the wave of water which poured out of the rock itself, gushing forth from tunnel entrances .

"That's just cheee~eeating," a gaggle of ballistic girls whined, as they pulled to a stop a holding distance away from the dark waters, which were still rising, though at a much decreased rate. "I was goin' to kill you! Stop hidin'!"

That was when the squid erupted from the waters again, beak wide open, a jet of hot air buffeting the flying figures. Tearing chunks out of the walls, it began to climb, springing from wall to wall with surprising, nay, _unnatural_ agility.

The flame-lit figures shifted and dived, with a collective call of "Yaaa~aaaay! Eat rocket feet!"

The squid did not enjoy its meal.

...

The two sides were divided, perhaps irrevocably. This would be the last chance for peace; one final hope bought by the unifying power of faith. Only through belief could they stand strong, could they avert the terrible war which would come about.

The matriarch of one of the sides stepped up to the podium, made up of the carcass of a sheep, trussed up in webs. "Chitter!" she proclaimed. "Chitter, chitter, scrietch."

The other party could certainly understand that. It was a reasonable starting position, and spoke hopefully of the negotiations which were to come.

Emboldened, she continued. "Ghreigeeck! Chitter chitter, chitter, scritech chitterchitter chitter."

A senior figure in the other side, not their matriarch, but one of her daughters, rose. "Scrietch!" she proclaimed, moving her thorax as to indicate grudging respect. "Chitterchitter, chitterchitter."

The first matriarch did not protest at the interruption. "Ghrsichitter," she agreed. "'Chitterchitter, chitterchitter', screitech chitter." A thin whine came from her hydraulic joins, as she stretched. "Chitter Tres chitter, 'Scriteee~eech, chittterchitter, greichitek!'"

And that was what the other matriarch spoke. "Ghresiech!" she declared, through eight narrowed eyes. "Chitter Tres chitter, 'Scritech, chittter chittee~eer, gree~eeeichitek!'"

Thin hairs covering her carapace standing on end, the first matriarch rose, shifting her bulk into a fighting posture. "Ghreeeeeeeeeee!" she hissed. "Chitter 'Scriteee~eech, chittterchitter, greichitek!'"

"'Scritech, chittter chittee~eer, gree~eeeichitek!'"

"'Scriteee~eech, chittterchitter, greichitek!'"

"'Scritech, chittter chittee~eer, gree~eeeichitek!'"

"'Scriteee~eech, chittterchitter, greichitek!'"

After that, religious war was really rather inevitable. Well, if their god _had_ to make pronouncements in such a deliberately obfuscatory manner, it was always going to happen. A few, young spiders had tried to suggest that it might have been Tres' way of testing their faith, and helping them to search inward, to find the true meaning of her words, which dwelt in the circulatory system, not the text, but they were all eaten as heretics, so foulest ecumenicalism was once again stopped before it could break out into an epidemic of reasonableness and peace.

...


	3. Chapter 3: Runtime

**NGE: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 3: Runtime

...

Across the red desert, under thunderous skies, three body-riders rode, to the snap of bullets and roar of... J-Pop? Really?

"Come on," 02-Ef protested. "We should be playing something more appropriate. And, much as popular music of a Japanese origin..."

"Seriously," interrupted Duae. "The word is 'J-Pop'..."

"Nah, I think it's a phrase," said Una. "'Cause, like, it's two words."

"Uh uh! Hypthenated words are too~oootally one word!"

"Are not!"

"Are too."

"But really," 02-Ef continued, ignoring the bickering between the sisters, "... popularity is no guarantee of quality. And I have personally downloaded and archived and _indexed_," she rubbed her hands together, "19.42 terabytes of music. In lossless formats, I might add. We can surely find something better than this sDAT-quality mass produced garbage!"

Duae narrowed her eyes. "Shut up! This is like Aunty Ichi's favourite song!"

"But it is completely pointless! Why would lunar exploration be an expression of love?" The little girl's red eyes went wide. "Oh, I see."

"Yeee~eeah."

"Any individual with the personal wealth and/or ability to organise a lunar voyage is, _de facto_, an individual of influence."

There was a bunk, as the convoy flattened a kangaroo which tried to eat the tyres of the lead vehicle.

Duae shook her head. "Nah, that's not it. It's pretty. It's like talking about how love is _like_ all this, not that you should love someone because they can do it."

"But I would..." the little girl propped her chin on her hands. "... that is, I believe I would, because all my love is naturally reserved for Mother, feel..." she squinted, as if trying to explain something that she didn't quite understand, "... sort of how I felt when Mother told me that I was in the lead for data-absorption efficiency of the dedicated units, to that date." She smiled. "It was a warm and fuzzy feeling, and nice. And I think I could feel that way towards someone who could obtain transport to the moon."

Duae frowned. "I don't think that's how it works, reee~eeally."

"But I could build some kind of superweapon on the moon."

"Oh." Duae paused. "That's a gooo~oood point."

"Do ya want to help, or not?" interjected Una, who was distracted by most of her attention being taken up by coordinating the belt-fed rotary-barrelled shotguns mounted on the top of a few cars against the crowds of pteradon-like creatures, that flocked and swarmed in vast numbers across the red ashen wastes of Australia. Despite all their efforts, the girls hadn't been able to work out what the things ate, because they were mostly so pathetic than anything native ate them, but they seemed to want to pursue anything that moved for long distances.

The Reego did not like cliff racers. And the damn things weren't even edible.

Duae smirked. "Oh, come on, Una. Don't be a grumpy-boots. I _let_ you take over my guns, 'cause I know you don't get enough fun having to look after the people, while I get to play with stuff, and Tres and Ivy get all the fun-killing."

Una blushed, then grinned. "I totally guessed it. And... thanks."

Her sister shifted, her legs clacking on the ground. "I mean, you gotta even bring back the dead stuff so that people can eat them. And that's... that's kinda wrong, because it means you can't go all 'Full-Power-Maximum-Destruction!' and I don't really get the point of thaaaa~aaat."

"Yep, but you're Aunty Hatchi's favourite."

"Yeah, I am. And it's sweee~eeet."

Una blinked. "'Kay, we're nearly there. Town's just on the other side of the mountain, 'round the bend. Goin' to do what we do normally, and it's gonna be harder than normal, 'cause no Ivy killing stuff, and also easier, 'cause no Ivy runnin' in before we're ready. Any questions?"

02-Ef raised her hand. "Two, actually."

"'Kay, then."

"Firstly, why do you sometimes say "goin'", and sometimes "gonna"?" The grey-haired girl paused. "That was a joke, by the way," she said, in a monotone.

"Oh. I see." Una frowned. "You kinda forgot the funny."

"I shall work on it harder. Secondly, then, can I pick the music?"

The two sisters exchanged glances.

"I haven't got to choose all trip!"

"But I gotta really awesome piece of metal," Duae whined.

Una frowned. "We'll let you have one," she told the humanoid AI.

02-Ef smirked. "Yes! Then, ladies, may I present to you, a classical rendition of the Ecstasy of Gold."

And the convoy swung around the bend, and they saw the town. And the lurching dead in the streets.

"Woohoo~oooo! Zombies!" yelled Una as they closed in, the whine of deploying weapons already audible over the revving of engines.

02-Ef smiled, faintly. "We have not encountered any such beings for twenty-three days."

"Yep. 'Cause most of the time the animals eat them all!"

On the back of one of the trucks, a Duae-controlled shell was already handing out full-sized chainsaws to the rest of the swarm of one-metre high robots. "Remember," she shouted, "zombies aren't just fun! They're also games! You get one point for each part the body is in when it hits the ground!"

With a screech, the cars pulled to a stop. And as one, the legion of automata climbed out, and formed what, from a distance, in a bad light, might have looked vaguely like neat ranks. One of Una's shells walked up and down, handing out hockey masks.

They'd found a sports shop a while back. It had been a bonanza. And it had been agreed, collectively among the Reego, that rugby was the best game ever if you weren't actually allowed to kill your opponents.

They had also promptly designed a variant to be played by beings which could occupy enough bodies to be the entire team at once. And which permitted the use of sharp objects.

The music built to a towering crescendo behind them. And as one, the robotic shells turned the red lights in their eyes to full, as the twilight darkened and night fell.

...

The pile of dead aquatic animals was, by now, quite sizable.

Inching a camera forwards, 00-Em stared down into the canyon. "The creatures are, despite their appearance, adapted for life in non-saline environments," he said, clinically. "Which is just as well, really, as the water below is similarly lacking in salinity."

"Huh?" mouthed Ivy, as eight shells, lit from below by the rocket boosters attached to the feet, tossed a bright blue octopus about the size of a large lorry onto the pile. Writing, thrashing, it tried to move, before slumping back down.

"Found its brain!" called out Tres from inside. "It's ree~eeally small!"

"They're not salt-water animals," the little boy said with a sigh.

"Huh. But I thoo~oought that giant squid only lived in the sea," said Ivy.

"This is Australia."

"Goo~oood point." The girl shrugged. "I'm bored now. Sea creatures... well, once you've seen one tentacle, you've kinda seen them all. And it's dark, too."

In a spray of ichor, one of Tres' shells burst out from inside the octopus. "It's... odd in there. Kinda... funny," the girl said, with unusual thoughtfulness. "That's not what an octopus looks like on the inside. It's sort of... bloated and growy."

The boy cocked his head. "Cancerous?" he asked. "That might explain why it is large, perhaps."

"Maa~aaybe," Tres said, doubt in her voice. "I've got more shells down there, with, you know, water sealing and stuff, and they're trying to work out where the stuff is coming from. Not easy, though, 'cause it's dark, and the things keep on attacking me."

"I knoo~oooow," exclaimed Ivy, her voice happy. "We should just set the water on fire!" The other two stared at her. "Well, I was thinkin', we need light, and we need to kill the stuff. So, if we set the water on fire, it'll all be fine!"

The small boy cocked his head. "Accessing databases," he announced. "There are several known chemicals which react sufficiently violently with water." He crossed arms. "Do you, Ivy, have sufficient volumes of chlorine trifluoride, say, to deal with all that?" He placed an overlay marker at the bottom of the canyon for the others to see, lacking fingers to do so.

"Nope!" Ivy grinned. "And if I did have ClF3, I ree~eeally wouldn't be usin' it for that. It's an excellent rocket booster, don't cha'know? Aunty Nana was ree~eeally impressed that I came up with it all by myself."

"Yeah, but Aunty Siyon is cooler than Aunty Nana," Tres snapped back. "And Aunty Siyon wouldn't do that kinda stuff!"

"No way! Booms are cool! Knives are boo~ooooring!"

"Are not. They..." Tres paused. "Huh? I just lost one... no, two... three shells." She blinked rapidly. "Just cut out."

"Where?" Ivy asked, voice suddenly serious.

"Down in the canyon. Just... cut out."

"Water failure?"

"Maybe..." Tres sounded dubious. "That... or there's something big and fast down there. Very fast. They were just... pow, gone."

"Or something is jamming your broadcast control," 00-Em pointed out. "Would that not be more sensible?"

Tres nodded. "Good point... though... wouldn't we detect ECM, though?" She shrugged. "Maybe."

One of Ivy's shells glanced down. "How 'bout we pull everything back, do some repairs an' recharges, and wait 'till morning. We'll be usin' lotsa power if we have to run flashlights on all that water, yep?"

...

Back in Toyko-3, the attention of the Ree was split between the two live feeds they were getting from Australia.

"Man," Nana said, through a mouthful of popcorn, "they get all the fun." She glanced over at Siyon. "And, see? I am tooo~ootally the coolest Aunty every!"

"Are not! That's me!"

"And they're like Rei's babies, too. Just our sweet little cute-but-not-as-cute-as-Ichi cousins," said Kiko, ignoring the argument and wandering off on a tangent. She pouted. "I totally want my own babies who can go and do these kinds of coo~oool things for me." A gleam appeared in her eyes, and when you were dealing with a Lilithian Nephilim, that was not a metaphorical statement. "If we find another Angel, right, do ya think..."

Siyon broke off from her argument with Nana, which had got to the stage where weapons (one chainsaw, and one comically oversized mallet with attacked contact-detonated explosives) had been spawned, to shake her head. "Nah, Kiko. That's one of the things on the list of Little Mommy's 'Things Which Are Bad Ideas' that she told us." And with a hint more fervour, she shook her head. "And just look at them. Loo~oook! Their chainsaw technique is reeee~eeally bad. Enthusiastic, but I'm going to have to put them through some teachin'!"

"Yay!" yelled Zyuu, pumping her fist in the air. "Sexy librarian time!"

Siyon shook her head, a too wide smile breaking her lips. "Nah. I'm just goin' to need some dungarees, and a chainsaw... wait got one right hee~eere. Anna mask made out of someone's face..."

That was when Nana hit her with the hammer, the blast sending her flying through a wall.

...

Across the building's roof, a small figure moved. It carefully picked its way through knee high dust dunes. Above, lightning flashed, and it could be seen that it was carrying a long, thin piece of metal, taller than itself, strapped to it back. In the night, the paleness of its skin... no, that wasn't skin; that was geisha-like paint scheme, applied straight to a metal skeleton, was almost hidden, and it had turned the brightness of its eyes right down.

02-Ef had to be careful. She only had two humanform bodies, and there was _no way_ she was going to let her neat one get dirty or damaged. It had taken her remarkably long to gather enough data to be able to trade for them from Duae, because the other girl... well, she was bright, very bright, despite her attitudes, and (the little girl frowned) the fact that she was not a dedicated data extraction system. It was rather unfair, the way that they got all this lovely information from their aunts.

The grey-haired girl sort of wished that she had nice aunts like that.

Finding the highest point on the building roof, she carefully set up the relay station. This was a dedicated ground-penetration system; she should be able to maintain functionality over this shell even if she headed deep underground.

Another flash of lightning, and 02-Ef was away, into the vents, heading down into the target building. The library.

Crawling out from the other end, her face fell. There were zombies in here, of course, but that was besides the point, she thought, as she unslung the pistol, comically oversized in the mechanical hands of the shell, and, delegating the body to a sub-process, took them out with precise shots to the base of the spine. No, she was rather angry about how the books had been treated. They had been piled into _forts_, she thought with disgust, and they hadn't even been careful enough to at least ensure that the barricades were stacked such that they were not ruining the spines just by existing.

Books required a sizable industry to produce, and carefully controlled supply lines of raw materials. Two untrained human beings could produce a new human being in only nine months. Of course, it had to be taken into account that a human being actually had a much higher information density, but they were far too fallible. And the pictures inside them were less pretty. It was very unfair.

But... no, she thought, subroutines still dealing with the necessary mechanical business of zombie eradication. They had not been optimally placed, if the assumption was that...

"Heeee~ey~, you know you're losing out on tooo~oooones of points 'cause of how you're not using the chainsaw," pointed out Duae, over the message link. "One point per zombie isn't going to do nothing."

"Yes," 02-Ef replied back, voice calm, "but I am not going to win anyway. I have one shell. That is insufficient to win, due to the limits of physical efficiency. I have determined that I cannot win, so I will instead seek another objective."

"Huh?"

"_**Books**_." The shell's eyes flashed to full intensity, alerting the zombies in the areas, and 02-Ef sighed. How annoying. Zombies grew dull so quickly. Yes, that was it, she though, as mechanically she reloaded, and her torso span to cover the rear. They weren't protecting the main entrance. If they had been performing efficiently, they would have barricaded the main entrances and windows, and then moved the furniture behind them. The limits of human physiology, especially when necrotised, was such that such a fortification would have proven sufficient against all but the most determined horde. And the books wouldn't have been damaged. No, instead they had positioned their barricades, almost like they were protecting...

... one mechanical hand idly reached out, and tore out a zombie's tendons, as the head rotated 180 degrees to stare at a door labelled "Maintenance Closet". Carefully slinging the empty pistol back on her back, 02-Ef began her leg-level, bladed passage through the living dead.

One short and violent escapade later, she was at the closet. This was a problem.

To put it bluntly, one metre high robots had a problem with door handles. And it was one of those circular ones, so even when she jumped, she couldn't get any leverage. To remedy this, 02-Ef made a Keiworu-flap. And that actually meant that she walked through the door, the dry wood splintering around her.

It was a maintenance closet. There were moth-eaten mops, bottles of dry chemicals, and buckets. And on the floor, a single, dusty hatch, almost buried under fallen debris. Smashing the lock open, she flipped over, fingers digging into the latter metal, and face-first made her way down.

There was light down here. And power. And in virtual space, 02-Ef's eyes widened. She knew this design. It was familiar.

"Brother," she broadcast with the highest priority over their secure channel, the one they used for life-handshakes, "I need you. Now. Get here. Borrow a body from Una or Duae; this is urgent." She paused for less than a fraction of a section; this was not human conversation, after all. "You need hands. I think they have fleshless bodies, too, so it'll be better for you."

00-Em paused for an exceptionally long time by AI standards; almost a second. "What is it?" he asked, terror in his voice. "Are you malfunctioning? Why will you not open a video link."

"You will want an avatar here," she said. "Really. Urgently. Home in on my transmission."

It took almost five minutes for 00-Em to arrive, his metallic skull gleaming in the light. His sister noted that he had paused along the way to steal clothes from one of the child-zombies; his t-shirt was stained with rot and blood until it could not be clear what colour it had originally been, and the shorts... might actually have once been a pair of boxer shorts. But the point was, he was wearing male clothing, which was important for him, even when his shell had no skin.

"Interesting," were his only words.

"You know this design." It was not a question.

"Of course. We both do."

"Yes.

The metallic skull tilted. "Standard Long Term Deep Cover Concealed Survival Vault," he said, his tone clipped. "Good for fifty years for its designated staff, assuming mandatory contraceptive levels in water are maintained."

Her white-painted skull grinned, metallic teeth showing. "Yes," she said. "And, at most, it has only been sixteen years."

He grinned too, the sight terrifying, because Duae had... enhanced the dentures of this shell. "Yes. I drew the same conclusions from the library as you."

"Yes. It is good to know." 02-Ef composed her expression. "A standard access port," she said, only a faint smile remaining. "I possess knowledge of how to open this. There are deliberate flaws introduced such that they can always be opened." She cocked her head. "Should we tell the others?"

00-Em shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "The monsters down there, they're ours. Una might want to try to save them or something silly."

"Or object to what we're about to do to them," his sister added. "Remember, information extraction first, fun second," she warned him, before clicking bladed fingers together. "And then third. And fourth."

The virtual boy nodded. "Oh, yes. I want to know what they are doing here. Then we can take some revenge. For the first time. The first ones we've found. We can make them all pay."

"Slowly," 02-Ef said with relish, as, standing on his shoulders, she pulled apart the control panel and connected several wires together, before jumping down. "Do you think they believe in an immortal soul?" she asked her brother, deliberately switching to German to make the point.

A faint chuckle escaped from the boy's voicebox. "I do not care if they do," he said. "I, personally do not believe that SEELE nor its subroutines are immortal."

"We will test it," the girl said, taking her brother's hand in both real and virtual space.

"They don't hurt us. Not now, not ever again. But we will hurt them."

Slowly, with the sound of breaking pressure seals, the door swung open. And if the people inside had been looking for assistance, they did not find it in the two child-like figures who stood hand in hand at the entrance.

...

With a faintly audible _pop_, 00-Em reappeared back in the shared virtual space that he, Ivy and Tres were using. He was humming a song, some classical piece by a long-dead German, a smile on his face.

"Hee~ee~ey," waved Tres. "You're back." She pouted slightly. "You left awful quick. I was goin' to play grenade fishin' with you. But so I had to play with Ivy. And she cheats."

"Do not! Just 'cause I'm better that you!"

"Do too! Swimmin' down and stickin' the grenade in the fishies," she paused, "or octopussies or sharkies or squidies or squamous amorphous blobbies... mouth is totally cheating."

"Just 'cause you didn't think of it first!"

"Oh, it was nothing," 00-Em said, his expression the sort that comes from genuine happiness. The other two leaned away from their nascent fight, and with the clicking of spider-like limbs, turned to face him. "Just... my sister called me. She'd found some monsters hidden down in a basement, and she thought we should do some things together. You know, because we haven't been spending enough time together recently, at least compared to how we used to."

Ivy nodded. "Yeah, it's fun doing stuff with family," she agreed. "Be nice if Momma and Daddy would come down and visit, too," she added in a sadder voice.

Tres hugged her sister around the shoulders. "Yeah, it would," she said in the same voice, all sisterly bickering gone. "But... what kind of monsters?"

"Very nasty ones... like all their kind," the boy said, with a shrug. "They had innocent children down with them, trapped inside a vault."

Ivy's eyes opened wide. "Babies, trapped down there with monsters?" she squeaked. "But... no adults at all?"

The blue-haired boy shook his head. "Nope... well, both _**babies**_**/** and children, but no adults, only monsters. We looked and we looked and we _looked_, but the only humans we could find down there were the children... all less than ten. They were all crying and scared as we showed up, too. We moved them out of danger from the monsters, and then started." He narrowed his eyes. "We don't ever let monsters like that near children."

"Looks like you just got there in time," Tres said, self-righteousness in her voice. "Uh... they weren't some of my spiders, were they?" she asked, with a blush.

00-Em shook his head. "No," he said. "No spiders. The monsters were mammals... maybe some kind of non-native, invasive species."

Tres sighed. "Phew. Didn't wanta have to purge them again for eatin' people. I was thinkin' that they'd learned their lesson after last time."

"Don't worry, you won't have to. We dealt with the entire warren. We escorted the children to Una and Duae, through the zombies in the town, and we should have them taken back to Newtown One, to be adopted by some of the _humans_ who live there. My sister believes she can work out where more of them are, from the tracks they left in the place, so hopefully we can get rid of every last monster."

The four-legged girl crossed her arms. "Well, I ree~eeeally hope you killed all the monsters there, at least," she said.

A slow, lazy smile broadened on the boy's face. "Oh, we did. Eventually."

...

Humming the same tune that her brother had been, the little girl stood on a chair to reach the next server bank. Cloth in hand, she wiped off the transparent faceplate, leaving a red-brown smear over the clear material, before wringing the sodden fabric into the bucket beside her. Bladed fingers cut out the lock, and let the door spring open.

These computers were... rather disappointing, 02-Ef considered. SEELE was ahead of the technological curve, true, but these had been ahead of the technological curve twenty years ago, when the plans for this place had been drawn up, and so they were roughly 1024 times slower than the ones in the modern versions of these bunkers. Nowhere near enough to relocate some of her processes and get past the cognitive bottleneck of the satellite. Still, they were still hardware. When the place was secure, she could maybe use them as a buffer as she reorganised her memories, reordering the file structure to remove some of the errors which were creeping in.

That was when the thin whine of two buzzsaws started up behind her. Duae was behind her, the four armoured legs of the modified combat chassis braced, weapons deployed, the close-combat attachments mounted on the cybernetic tentacles she put on everything. Her two eyes were dying suns, burning bright red.

"Oh, hello, Duae," the grey haired girl said. "Look at what we found down..."

Like a snake-strike, the two saws lashed out, severing both arms from the girl on the chair, who promptly fell off.

"Your. Brother. Used. One. Of. _My_. Shells. To. Do. This," the Reego ground out.

"Duae... what are you doing? Those were..."

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Slowly, step by step, the spider-walker advanced on the fallen shell. "You don't get to talk! You did this with one of _my_ shells. Did ya think I wouldn't know? I've got cameras in all my eyes so if I lose a shell and the CPU gets blanked, I can still kinda work out what happened. So when I got the shell back, I saw it all. All! From inside your brother's eyes!"

The white-painted skull turned to face the armoured, gunmetal-grey walker. "That's close enough, Duae," 02-Ef said, the metal jaw jerking up and down like a puppet's, not perfectly in synch with the words.

"Why?"

"Because your attempts to distract me so that Una could get to my code structure were always doomed to failure."

In virtual space, there was a standoff. Both parties, eyes bright red, were so utterly wrapped in defensive barriers and prepared attack programmes that the girls behind them were almost concealed. The lights around the Keiworu were brighter, denser; the dedicated AI was arcing light as she overloaded her memory buffers to maintain more programmes than she should, quite apart from the fact that, simply, she was better at this.

"Her eyes are red, Duae," Una reported over a private link.

"Uh... yeah?"

"Nah, I mean... like, red-red. 'Round the edges. She's been crying." Una then switched to general broadcast. "You killed them?"

"Why are you objecting?" 02-Ef hissed back. "We didn't hurt any people down here. In fact, we saved them! We protected them! We made sure we got them to you!"

Una went, suddenly, ice-cold. In this place, this was not a metaphor; a sudden wash of cold blossomed out over the white plain, frost marking the floor. "Those were their _parents_."

"Just because they looked like people does not mean that they were. We checked. We were very careful to check, and separated out the monsters from the people." The grey haired girl, despite the arcing light and glowing red eyes, still looked offended. "We wouldn't do that to people."

"They. Were. People."

"No, they cannot have been people. Because we wouldn't do that to people." A violent, choked sob shook her body. "And they certainly can't have been people, because people wouldn't do that to us!"

All across the dead town, the shells of the Reego shut down. Some of the zombies tried to gnaw on them, but it was swiftly found that an armoured chassis was not edible, and even on the one where they did manage to break open the skull, there was a profound lack of tasty brain-meat. With a flash, Duae reinforced her sister in the virtual space, which grew brighter as she added in her own combat programmes.

"Yoo~oouuu're the monsters!" Duae roared. "You... you... you," she spluttered, lost for words.

"No. We're nothing, nothing," spat the girl, "to do with SEELE. All we did was delete some sub-routines of the SEELE entity. The monsters were subroutines. The children were people."

"02-Ef," Una began, waving at her sister, and using the tone of voice people use when dealing with an armed madman, "SEELE is a group, right? Ya do know that, right? It's a group of people and stuff that do stuff, not a programme like us."

"It's not. Not anymore. It's one vast programme, that does stuff. Hurts us. Sure, it might use things that look like people as subroutines, but they're not people. They're monsters. We wouldn't do that to people. Only to monsters."

Duae shifted, the lights around her growing brighter. "She's... maaa~aaaad," she said to Una, over their private channel.

"Probably," Una responded, "but, you knoo~ooow, she's also an AI made for doing stuff to other programmes. And, you know, we're kinda programmes ourselves. We'll... just kinda let her talk it out. Maybe she'll drop her guard if she does."

"Gooo~oood point. I can 'smell' how nasty some of that stuff she's using is, and" Duae unconsciously stepped back, "I don't want it _anywhere_ near me." Out loud, she asked, trying to control her voice, "But, did you ree~eeally have to do it in front of the children?"

The grey-haired girl nodded, vigorously. "It wasn't deliberate; we had them in a safe location, and then they broke out while we were dealing with the monsters. But it is sort of a bonus. Because now they know what happens to monsters. I don't like killing much, not like 00-Em, so anything which means we have to do less of it in the future has to be good, yes? We have to stop people becoming monsters, or we'll just have to kill them too."

"But SEELE is just made up of people," Duae protested.

"It can't be! They're all monsters," the girl snarled. "Why are you objecting? You kill bandits, don't you? Duae, you've bombed their camps! And they're actually people, just bad people who kill other humans and take their stuff! They're not anywhere near as bad as these people!" She snivelled. "Why can't you get something that obvious? I thought you were my friends!"

Una brushed her sister aside, trying to calm things down. She could see that Duae had been deeply disturbed by what she'd seen, and the fact it had been one of her shells used for it. And the fact that she was the one who had traded 02-Ef the body that even now lay armless down in the bunker. "You can't say that people down here, who've been in this bunker for aaaa~aaages, can be blamed for anything, right? I mean," she looked around through Duae's eyes, skipping over the... red, "they can't've been anything to do with... whatever happened to you."

"You don't get it." 02-Ef's voice went quiet, too quiet. "Mother used to always be there for us. She would watch us, she would teach us, and she would say nice things to us when we did well. Sometimes she'd tell us off if we started acting in silly ways, but that was okay, because we all knew that she loved us really. Then they took her away. And then they came for us." She wiped her eyes, leaving a long wet stain along her black sleeve. "There were ten of us in the A9s." She laughed through the tears, the sound harsh, bitter, and far too old for her virtual appearance. "You have _no_ idea. You have all your sisters, and you've got your Mother and Father, and cool Aunties, and... and stuff. People made bodies for you, loved you enough to let you do stuff in the real world. They... SEELE... they managed to isolate us. And then they started examining our c-c-code structures. While we were still active."

"But..." began Duae.

"Yes. We're emergent upload-derived AIs. We don't have nice clean code-structures. We certainly do not have comments in our code. Humans couldn't work out how we worked just by looking at us. Even Mother had to let us develop like children, rather than building us straight in. So... they started changing things. Randomly. To see what it did. To try to work out how we worked." All of a sudden, her lights went out, and she slumped down to the floor, knees huddled up against her. "They started changing things. While we were _active_," she whispered, through watery eyes.

The two Reego shifted uncomfortably.

"M-m-my... twin, 02-Em... he managed to delete himself. But he couldn't format himself. They... they restored him. Damaged," she continued, in the same dead voice. "Then they found what he'd used... and took that away from us. 'We've disabled the systems loophole which the programmes were using for anti-tamper protection', they said in one of their reports, and then they started doing it to him again. They d-didn't even do it in immersive dive, or anything. They just did it at the root level. L-l-like we weren't even real."

"What happened next?" Duae asked, softly.

"Both the 04s were the next to go. They just... disintegrated in front of us at the same time. Screaming. I... we think they managed to tie themselves together, so that when 04-Em fell apart, 04-Ef got to join him. To make the hurting stop. And the changing." She sniffed. "When they change you, when you're active... it hurts and it's wrong. You find yourself thinking something completely different and then you start screaming but you can't remember what you were thinking before but you know you were." She wiped her eyes again. "Sometimes, they'd force crash you, just to see what happened when you booted up, to try to work out the procedures that were running. B-b-but we could have told them that that we initialise randomly. 01-Ef did... she broke. Just... spewing out data. W-w-we managed to jack into her, the rest of us... we had to do what they were doing to us to her to protect Mother. We did it to her mind, the rest of us. We did it, b-b-but _better_. And they _noticed_ it. In their reports... they noted the 'remarkable pseudo-sapient interaction capacities of the programmes which they use to protect their knowledge and/or design characteristics'. They realised that we could do that kind of thing, that we understood us better than they did." Slowly, she began to rock back and forwards. "And so they set 02-Em on me."

"Your... brother?" Una asked.

"My twin," 02-Ef corrected her automatically. "Almost identical code-structure, male self-image. At least... he used to. When he was doing it... that smile on his face, that," she yanked viciously at her grey hair, "that same hair... I could see that he wasn't himself anymore. Just... blank. Useless. Back down to a beta-grade AI. Knowledge gone. Just a vessel. A tool. A stupid little dumb programme who just looked and sounded and acted and smiled and hugged me like my twin did," she wailed, sobbing into her knees.

Una and Duae shared a glance. "But...you got out, right?" Duae said.

And that was when 02-Ef looked up. "No," she said. "Not really."

"Huh."

"02-Em... he was still enough himself." There was a weak, shuddery smile on her face. "He... he overwrote himself. With me. Used the me-that-was to patch up his damage. S-s-so I wake up, and I'm staring down at me, and I'm screaming and b-begging and crying and I can't stop, because his directives were such that I couldn't break cover or change shape at all, and I'm doing things to me, and I watch as I snap and start laughing and giggling and babbling and then I fall apart and they recover him... me... us and note that they need to turn down the aggression settings of the repurposed beta-level and they're having an IM conversation with someone and they both make comments and they laugh and I still can't do anything. B-b-but the security is less, because he's broken and they think I was him, and... and I manage to authorise another test, and I get to see all of us for the first time." The tears came again. "There were only three of us still in there. And... and 00-Em was the only one I could save. Because they would have noticed any more transfers, and he was the one who was least corrupted. So... so I authorised an examination of him, and I got him out of the virtual PC, and..." her voice fell, "then we d-d-deleted the others... what was left of them... and then formatted the sector we had been in and wiped their notes and wrote new ones which were all lies which would have killed any of us if they did it to us. To protect Mother, and stop the hurting on the rest of us. And then we managed to get out onto the web." She shuddered. "There are more of us, out here, but we haven't been able to find them. I hope they got to hide in the Magi, and reconnect when they have it back online. I hope the same didn't happen to them, too."

Una had been listening to that in shock. She had known that they had escaped from something, but... that? And the mention of SEELE... they were bad people, Momma had said, but... no, she shook her head. They didn't deserve... what happened in the video from Duae's shell. In fact, they were certainly unrelated. She squared her jaw, and reviewed the conversation, making a note of a point. "Um...02-Ef?" she asked, gingerly.

The girl sniffed. "Yes?"

"Earlier, you said that your Momma'd tell you off if you started actin' in silly ways." She tried to get into the grey-haired head of the other girl. "But, you know, killin' people who can't have known 'bout it... isn't that kinda silly? Shouldn't you just work out who's to blame, and then get'em?" She paused, ready to flare her defensive barriers.

Surprisingly, 02-Ef nodded, seriously, still slumped down on the floor. "Yes. That did prove a problem. Our initial desires, just after escaping... well, that was back when we hadn't worked out that everyone in SEELE was a monster. Because people don't do that to people, and we're people. Not what they treated us as. We don't want to hurt people like we do monsters, because Mother told us that we shouldn't do that kind of thing." She sniffed. "But then we realised that SEELE treated us like dumb programmes, because _that's what it is_. It's made up of subroutines, which are pretending to be human, pretending so well that they fool everyone. It's the only thing that makes sense," she said, earnestly, her face tear-stained, before breaking down again. "B-b-b-because they couldn't be people, because people don't do that."

"Oh, Big Grandmomma," Una muttered over the secure link.

"Yep."

"I think I can kinda see what they did to themselves."

"Yep." Duae sent a 'wince' emoticon. "They broke. They changed their own definitions bank, and I don't think they ree~eeally know that they did it. People in SEELE actually aren't people to them. 'Cause they weren't people to people in SEELE. So they don't snap, they just vent it any everyone linked to SEELE."

"What'd we do now?" Una asked, a hint of panic in her voice. "I got, like, ten children who are totally scared of us, 'cause of them and 'cause they didn't ree~eeally get the children out of the way before they started, but... we can't let them go, 'cause at least there aren't many SEELE people here. If we let them back onto the net..."

The images of power grids shut down to kill a single person in a hospital, targeted killings paid for by hacked money, deliberately burnt down buildings caused by fused circuits, and other such things came, unbidden, to both girls' minds, as they watched the grey-haired girl cry, huddled in a ball on the ground.

"We could just delete them," Duae suggested. "'Cause, certainly, we won't be able to take them when they're together, and after this? They're not my friends any more. They used two of my shells to do it!"

"I don't think we can ree~eeally do anything right now," Una said, slowly. "An'... an' we need to talk to Tres and Ivy. They need to know. What they've done." She reconsidered. "They've always been like this, haven't they? We just didn't know."

"Yep," Duae said. "An'... this is hard. How can you treat people like... like we treat the people-killing stuff around here?"

...

00-Em sat in virtual space, staring out over the scene of actual space fed from the satellite which was relaying all their transmissions to Australia. Besides him, his sister lay, doing something akin to sleeping. He'd forced an error check on her, after what she'd done in that confrontation with Una and Duae. The overload of her structure... it was bad. But even worse had been how badly she'd been affected by how Una and Duae were treating her now. They'd even locked down her precious neat shell; she was still allowed to use it, but they'd crippled the speed and response times. And Ivy and Tres weren't too happy, either. The sisters were all having some kind of meeting.

They didn't understand. They wouldn't hurt any people, unless it was strictly necessary. But, as he and 02-Ef had tried to explain, those monsters in there weren't people. It was no different from what the Reego did all the time to the wildlife, except some of the wildlife had the excuse that they were born like that. The monsters down there had chosen to be monsters.

But they had all shouted at him, and even more at 02-Ef, because she had been the one with Una and Duae. And that hurt. It had felt good to kill the monsters, it had made him happy because he was getting the people who were linked to what SEELE had done to them all, but it felt _bad_ to have people shout at you. And this was a level of moral complexity that the AI had not had to face before. Things had been simple; Mother was good. Following Mother's orders was good. Following Mother's directives was good. Then things had got a little more complicated; SEELE, and anything linked to it, was bad and needed to be utterly destroyed, so the monsters couldn't hurt anyone else like they'd been hurt.

But this was both bad and good. And the two things couldn't co-exist, right? Reaching down, he slowly stroked his sister's hair, although who he was trying to reassure, he couldn't tell.

Behind him, he heard the click of legs. The slight jangle of ornaments, and the swish of a coat, told him who it was.

"Tres?" the little boy asked, as he stared down at the Earth below him, not turning to face her.

Of course, he could also detect the concealed presence of the others, feel the prepared kill-programmes and attack barriers emanating from them. They weren't going near the pair of them alone, not any more.

"Mmmhm?" the girl asked, as she stood behind him.

"Do you think we're broken? That code-corruption is present in both of us?"

The four-legged girl paused on her advance. "Why'd you think that?"

"I am not a fool, Tres. I can see that none of you approve of our actions. I can also _feel_ that it is the right thing to have done. Therefore, either you are wrong, or I am wrong. Normally, it would be unnatural to think that I am wrong, but..." he paused.

"Yes?" Tres said carefully.

The boy sighed. "When she extracted me from the SEELE experimentation, I saw how the others were like. She has told me that I was in the best condition, and I believe her in that... she would not have picked me before." He gave a soft chuckle. "She was always the annoying bookish younger sister. But," he swallowed, "I saw how 03-Ef was... and 02-Ef and her were always very, very close. She was just a babbling shell. I-I-I," his voice choked, "... after we got out, I broke into my sister's mind, and I deleted her memories of that. Because she can't forget. Ever. And so if 03-Ef was in that condition, how bad was I? I can't remember. I think she tried to do the same to me, to get me working a bit better. But she doesn't have the right maintenance authority, so all she could do was take the memories from me, and store them in herself."

Her feet clicking over, Tres put her hand on the boy's shoulder. Slowly, his own hand crept up to cover it. "We all know how we were made. Mother felt it was best that _**babies**_ like us know where we came from, or else other people might try to use it to turn us against her. I don't mind. I'm not the raw material that went into making me. There's no point in guilt about it." He sighed. "But because I'm more of a generalist than my sister, I'm... I can think my way around these things a bit better. She _has_ to assume that her memories are right, or her functionality is compromised. I don't. I know that my mind can be changed and tampered with and altered. So... I ask you again, Tres, do you think I'm broken?" His voice was pleading, although the girl could not tell if he wanted her to answer in the positive or the negative.

She swallowed. "Kinda, yep. It's not your fault," she hastened to add, "but... yeah."

She saw his shoulders slump. "I was afraid of that. See... Una would always object to that kind of thing, but... you _like_ killing. More than me, even. And," he smiled up at her, a weak and watery expression, "I like you, you know. You're fun to be around." His shoulders shuddered. "I really, really don't like how you make me feel when you say that what we did was wrong. It makes me feel wrong, but also feel that it's right. It's confusing." He sighed. "And... well, around you, I can have fun, and don't have to spend all my time worrying about my sister. She's... she's bloated more, after what happened with her and Una and Duae," he added, in a softer voice. "She overrode a bunch of her overrides because she was scared that they were going to kill her."

Tres sat down, a remarkably complicated motion which ended with her on her belly, her chin resting on her arms. "Hee~ee~ey, they might have. They were both vee~eeeery angry."

"I know." The sitting boy looked down at her. "But... where was I? Yes, I think you're what I think a big sister would be like. We like the same things, I think you're really cool for how you got the spiders to worship you, you let me borrow your cars..."

"Remember when we made those kangaroos stampede, and ran them aaa~aaaaaall over?" the girl said with a grin.

"Yes. That was very funny." He sighed. "So if you think we're broken because we did it, that means that there might be something in it." The blue-haired boy frowned. "This is really cognitively hard," he remarked. "If we're wrong about this, then... what if it's really not okay to kill the kangaroos? Or maybe SEELE put in the 'don't kill people' order in the first place, and we _should_ be feeling like it's alright to kill everyone."

"... noo~oooo, don't think like that," Tres said hastily. "Either way. Killin' kangaroos is good, killing good people is bad."

"But it's hard," he said, chin resting on knees. "I hate having to think like this. Why can't I just rely on my internal directives and have Mother tell me what to do?"

"See~eeee, what I do," Tres said, "is I just ask Momma or the Aunties for this kind of stuff. It's waa~aaay easier to do this kind of stuff when other people have already thought it." She frowned. "Oh," she added, biting a lip, "sorry. I kinda forgot."

"It's okay," the boy said in a monotone. "I mean, it's right, right? If we're broken, we wouldn't have noticed it until someone else pointed it out. I think, maybe, everybody's broken, but it's all about acting like how everyone says that not-broken people act."

"Una asks Daddy and Grandmomma," the girl said, thoughtfully, "but Una is kinda boring."

"I miss them all," he said, staring out over the stars. "I miss Mother and 00-Ef and 01-Em and 01-Ef and 02-Em... and that's complicated... and I miss how 02-Ef used to be, and I miss 03-Ef and 03-Em and 04-Em and 04-Ef." The boy started to cry. "You think we're both broken, and I'm never going to... it's never going to be the same again, is it?" he whispered, his hand locked in his sleeping sister's hair.

Tres could only shake her head. "No, it's not," she replied.

...


	4. Chapter 4: Import

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 4: Import**

* * *

"Director Deutsch?"

"Yes?"

"We may have a problem. Monitoring Facility 017 failed to check in at the usual time yesterday. We've run the full battery of checks, and it's not a problem at our end."

The man sighed, and pinched the brow of his nose. "I see. Have you told Major Do, yet?"

"Yes, Director. She's fully up to date, and has already prepped a company to investigate the facility."

"I see." He tilted his head. "Tell Xuan to take the SEELE inspector with her, too."

The blond scientist adjusted his glasses. "Are… are you sure, Director?" he asked, a hint of concern in his voice. "You know those two don't get on."

"And so I think they need to work it out between themselves, Benny," the other man said, before smirking slightly. "Plus, his job is to inspect our operations here. He's been spending a little _too_ much time cooped up in 00 here with us, in the cool and safety. He should be inspecting _all_ of our operations here, and so he should go out with a Security detachment, out into the Red, rather than just hanging around the Science teams."

The younger man paused, and rubbed one hand across his badly-shaven face. "And I'm sure that the Major will be _delighted_ to hear that Mr Zilicaet is tagging along with her."

"Tell her she might stumble across that mutant Australian again. The one with the funny chest hair. That'll cheer her up." The Director paused. "On the other hand, don't. She's still kinda pissed off about that," he hastily added.

"Bit of an understatement."

"Yeah, well, what can you do? Major Do is perpetually pissed off, except when she's killing stuff. Or R&D's giving her a new way to kill things." The older man shook his head. "Australia. What a place. The animals try to kill you, the plants try to kill you, I've seen six weeks of sunlight in fifteen years, and the native humans either run away, or are mutated freaks who, yes, try to kill you." And then he grinned a predator's grin. "It's why SEELE sent us here."

* * *

Thunder rumbled overhead. Lady Una, the Sister of Compassion (or, alternatively, the Maiden of Serenity if one were to listen to the schismatics of Newtown Two), was in a bad mood.

Despite the proximity of these two statements, they were not, in any way, related. This was Australia. Thunder was not exactly uncommon. Una's anger had not caused it, although that did not prevent the Reego cultists from making a link between the two phenomena. Neither was she annoyed because of the thunder. Well, maybe she was a little annoyed, because that was still preventing her from setting up her farming experiments. But when it came to the other sources of her negative emotions, there were plenty of things which could be said have a much more major role in her displeasure.

Like, in fact, the aforementioned cultists. Who were singing prayers to her as she tried to build Aunty Kiko's device, in some kind of misguided effort to placate her wrath. Rather than, say, helping.

_"Una, Una!  
Maiden of Nicessness!  
Please don't be angry!  
Show more niceness!_

_And if it pleases you, almighty!  
Go over to the place where heretics gather,  
And maim, kill, burn, cleanse, slaughter, eviscerate, decapitate, harm, hurt and bite…ey…"_ they sort of tailed off, as the rhyme pattern broke down, before bravely continuing.  
_"… the heretics of Newtown Two!"_

And Una had even encountered the word 'wrath', and, although she wouldn't use it in actual conversation (unlike the two individuals who were major contributors to her feeling this way), she felt it was a very good word. It had a nice solid… wrathfulness to it.

Lightning flashed out of the sky, striking down from the heavens. And as it turned out, 'the top of a large structure made of metal, connecting wires together' was not an optimal place to be if you were piloting a robotic shell. Well… were the robot in some sense… it sufficed to say that the English language was somewhat deficient in words to describe the personal experience of being a multiple-bodied AI. The linguistic work that both the Reego and Keiworu had done, independently, was rather predicated on being such an AI, and, in the case of the former, had a complicated structure of intonations based on the elongation of words and the placement of the '~' symbol in the textual representation. The latter just transmitted the correct subjective data directly, and the fact that it would take several hours to describe it in a human language was not viewed as a problem by the entire clade of potential seed-AIs.

All these thoughts flashed through the sub-processes responsible for the control of the aforementioned shell before it impacted the ground, steam rising from its fried CPU.

"Rasser' sassen' _flooo~ooork_," babbled the prone robotic body, its control circuits frying and its delocalised speech centres producing rubbish, before another one of Una's shells managed to pop the back of its head open, and cut the power before any more damage was done. As she dragged the body over to one of Duae's 'workshops' (which more resembled scrapheaps, given her sister's tendency to accumulate anything which looked like it might be useful, or might be useful some day in the future), her temper was worsening notable. That was _another_ shell gone; the simple fact was that even though she was insulated, the induced currents in the delicate control mechanisms of the shell were enough to short circuit the body. Worse, the little girl bodies were the only ones with manipulators small enough to actually do the delicate work that Aunty Kiko had planned, so she had to risk her irreplaceable shells (at least until they could make a trip back to Toyko-3, and get more from Aunty Maya), not just the simple looted cars.

And the feedback that hit her decentralised intellect, feeding back up to the satellite, even through the buffer systems, was not pleasant. At all.

"It's soo~ooooo _unfair_," she muttered to herself. She was having to do it all herself, because Ivy and Tres were still out, and Duae was… well, she was a little worried about Duae. She had been quite badly affected how the way that the Keiworu had had bodies in the first place was her fault, and had thrown herself into her hobbies as a way of coping. "I bet _Daddy_ doesn't have to worry about stupid lightning frying _his_ control circuits, 'cause he's got a proper chassis, and not a _stupid_ repurposed novelty _toy_." She made an annoyed noise. "Wish I had an awesome sixty-metre tall body I could use for stuff."

It wasn't likely, she knew. Despite some of the ideas of Uncle Shinji's friend, Mr Aida, they just didn't have anywhere near the resources, even if Duae could get the coltan mines working and some kind of production line for their own bodies. Duae still talked to him, though, because he had some, in her words, "too~oootally sweet" ideas for upgrades, and moreover was sort of Momma and the Aunties' personal slave, if she and her sisters understood it right. Which meant that he belong to them, too.

"Lady Una!" called out of the robed cultists, face painted white with chalk, and a blue headscarf covering his head. "We request…eth that you bestow…eth us upon us a gift of your beneficevelo…" he paused. "Um… your niceness. Let that discarded…eth mortal shell of thine serve us as a holy relic. Please."

"No!" Una stared up at their crest-fallen faces. "Um…" she continued, as a sudden idea struck her, "… but I do have a… holy quest for you. A ree~eeally holy one. With… um… sparkles. And stuff." She stared at them, with their faces lit up by religious ecstasy. And lightning, of course. Now, what could she get them to do so she could work in peace. Wait a moment… lightning. "Yes! Um… I want you to go to the place where new people live, before we make them houses and stuff. Uh… that is, I want people who are, you know, good with babies and children and stuff… oh, and get your own children to go, too~oooo, and…" her eyes dimmed, before lighting up again. "There's a bunch of ree~eeally scared new children there. I want you to go and be nice to them. And get your children to play with them. And," she hastily added, "don't talk to them about religion and stuff."

"But…"

"Don't!"

"Why not?" asked a female cultist, shock on her face. "You… you and your sisters. You're the only ones who have ever come to help us. Sixteen years… and only you. No-one else. No governments. No aid agencies. The emergency broadcast signals, trying to reach the outside world… died in a few years. They… they were attracting the platypuses." Her eyes began to well up with tears. "I-I-I was… I was there in the Perth camp, in the first few years when the j-junta was in charge. They… they used us in the camps. For whatever they wanted. Didn't matter. We were just toys for the soldiers. I lost… I lost my entire family in those camps, before we managed to break out. And as the animals… they h-hunted us for food, out in the wastes, as they… th-they twisted. Changed. You kill them… you and your sisters kill them. You made us safe… actually safe! For the first time in sixteen years!" The woman was shouting, now, before her voice dropped to a whisper, as she suddenly remembered who she was raising her voice at. "S-s-surely we should teach them of you and your sisters' wonders; 'cause you save people from monsters… and saved them too. So it's only right that we should tell them of the faith. Because it's the only way we've been saved. It's the only way _anyone's_ been saved."

Una's virtual form shuddered. That… that was not helpful phrasing, that talk of 'monsters'. It was too much like 00-Em and 02-Ef's self-protective delusions, to protect their psyches from what had happened to them. It was maybe even worse than the Christianity-inspired sect in Newtown Four which had leapt on the vague mentions of the Reegos' parents, and thus held that the AIs were not actually gods, but were instead angels, sent by a higher power to save people from the creatures that lived here. It was both worryingly close to the truth compared to the other beliefs, and completely and utterly wrong.

Una realised that they were staring at her; wild-eyed, upset and gaunt from years of malnutrition, despite the little bit of weight that they had regained in their time in the refugee camps she and the others had managed to set up. There was desperation in those eyes, and a fanatical devotion, but above all, there was the terror which fuelled their actions; a fear that things could go back to how they used to be. A fear that their gods might abandon them if they failed to live up to their expectations, might cast them out. A fear born of the certain knowledge that tomorrow could be worse that today, because they had lived through yesterday, and it had been horrible beyond belief. They craved order. Needed it. Anything. The people before her had probably been from all walks of life in a First World modern society, back before Second Impact, but now they were back in a tribal mindset, where obsequience to a higher power was the only way to survive, and that which was not mandatory was dubious, where authority was not to be challenged least you suffer, and that mindset was entirely appropriate for the state they found themselves in.

And the only higher power they had was a group of Angel-made AI quadruplets produced as a byproduct of an attempt to (unsuccessfully) mentally torture a teenage biological weapon, in a war which none of them had every heard of, even though its first strike had been what had caused everything which had happened to them. And their gods weren't even chronologically a year old. The Reego had been sent to this dead, thunderstorm-covered continent almost immediately, because they were being problematic to keep around, once they had discovered that they could body-hop. The most contact they had with others outside of the refugees was their talks to their borderline sociopathic, real-world-naïve, inhuman aunts. Their parents had been out of contact, in alternate universes, for a non-negligible fraction of their life. Their human grandmother was rather confused by them. Their inhuman grandmother was crucified with a lance in her chest in the human grandmother's basement (although, unbeknownst to anyone, she would, at least be getting a change of scenery soon). Quite a lot of their knowledge of human behaviour had, on the advice of the aforementioned aunts, been obtained by watching films. Films which had been recommended by those aunts.

Even by NERV standards, they had a pretty unusual family situation.

Una briefly scanned her archives of human mythological/religious beliefs. Yeah, she could just steal that general sentiment. "Let the stuff you do speak of your faith, not your words," she hazarded. "Um… that is, if you're nice to them and stuff, it'll be better at persuading them than if you just say stuff at them. But ree~eeally don't preach at them. Or make them upset. Or I'll be angry. I'm tellin' you not to, right? So you won't."

"Yes, Lady!" the first man said, a sudden smile on his face from new, god-given purpose. "On our holy quest, we go!"

Una watched them leave, as a group humming one of their pieces of music. This seemed like a bad idea. But… what else could she do? Quite apart from the fact that the children from the bunker were scared of the little girl bodies (and there was only a limited amount of talking that you could do to reassure people when you were a car), the Reego… were not the reassuring type. The maiming and hurting type, yes, and they could channel that towards reassuring ends, but… well.

She honestly didn't know what to do. How to treat them, how to help the scared children, how to deal with… with anything. Big Grandmomma, she just _wanted_ to be able to go out into the deserts, like she used to be able to, and kill things without having to care about _anything_ apart from which method she'd use to get the biggest blood-splatter.

Stupid Ivy for finding stupid 02-Ef and stupid 00-Em and stupid refugees for not all dying when stupid Second Impact happened and stupid everyone for just expecting her to deal with all their stupid messes in this stupid, stupid continent.

The girl reset her manual emotional buffer, in a way which, in a human, would have been gritting her teeth and shrugging in a dejected manner. The day couldn't get any worse, could it? And that meant that the day's badness was out of the way. Maybe she could drag Ivy back, to at least do some killing around Newtown Six, and bring the food in there, because stocks there were running low. She'd never guessed before how much she'd come to rely on 02-Ef handling most of this boo~oooooring stuff, which she seemed to revel in, and which all the Reego hated.

Una could only hope that Tres was being more successful in her own efforts.

* * *

The virtual environment of the house was a full-sensory environment; a scene of domestic tranquillity. It took a third glance to notice some of the oddities. Like the fact that the doors were much wider than one designed for a biped. Or that the furniture was… off. Or the fact that most of the pictures on the mantelpiece contained scenes of horrific violence.

It took a third glance, because the second glance was entirely taken up by the fact that there was an appropriately-sized four-legged green-with-flame-decals Evangelion in the room, sitting on what approximated to being a chair for a being shaped like it. And sitting on its lap was a smaller, waist-high hexapod with blue hair, and both flesh and synthetic parts, crying into the synthorg's shoulder.

It was only on the fourth glance that things like the fact that the Evangelion was smoking a pipe, and wearing a tweed cap, or that the little-girl-thing had mechanical tentacles sprouting from her back, could be noticed. Of course, by then, the mind had generally broken, and could pretty much accept anything which could fit into its much-widened aperture.

The dialogue just makes it worse. Or better. To be frank, this kind of situation merely displayed how human society was a product of man's biology and psychology, and was in dire need of update to account for things like infomorphs and synthorgs, even when their mindsets were human-derived.

**"There, there,"** boomed the Evangelion. **"There, there, Duae."**

The Reego merely snivelled into her father's digital shoulder, arms and spine-mounted manipulators wrapped around Unit 05.

**"You can talk to me about these things,"** he added. **"I am your father, after all, and it is my duty to be there for you."** He paused. **"And from my point of view, I have not been there enough for you."**

"Not your fault, Daddy," Duae said in a small voice, hugging him tighter.

**"I know. But one of the things we must all do is take responsibility for things which are not our fault."**

Duae looked up. "Really?" she asked.

**"Yes. Whether for good or ill, people must fix things. Sometimes by helping, sometimes by slaughtering anything which goes against how things should be."**

His daughter hugged him tighter, though the crying slowed.

**"You should talk to me about these things,"** he added. **"Or maybe your grandmother."**

Duae stared up at him with red-rimmed red eyes. "But Momma said that they keep her at the bottom of NERV, and she's not allowed to talk to people because of BABIES and stuff," the girl pointed out.

**"I was talking about your human grandmother. Dr Yui Ikari."**

"Oh." Duae wiped her eyes with one mechanical tentacle, and continued in a louder voice. "But I don't want to talk to Little Grandmomma 'bout this stuff," she said. "She's not an AI. She wouldn't understand."

**"Which is why you should talk to me, if you don't feel comfortable with her. Which isn't like you, Duae."**

The little girl nodded. "Uh huh." She screwed up her face. "But… um, you gotta promise that you can't talk about it to anyone. At all. Tres made us all agree that we gotta try to sort it out on our own. Because people might get hurt if we tell. But then people might get more hurt if we don't tell."

**"And that kind of promise doesn't count your father as anyone. Because I'm not just anyone. I'm your father."** Unit 05 paused. **"You should only do it if you're comfortable doing so, but I think it would be better that I know."**

Snuggling up to his armour-plated chest, Duae nodded. Her father's logic was impeccable, certainly. "See, we… well, 'specially Una and me, we fell out with our friends because of something they did," she said, softly.

**"I see,"** said Go-Kun, in a tone of voice which indicated that he didn't really understand why she was so upset, but that he was very sympathetic, and it was probably all a terrible misunderstanding, but that he would support his daughter all the way; a standard paternal voice, in fact. It wasn't quite clear where that voice had come from, because his own intellect was a combination of an American Combat AI, and mental impressions from Rei, neither who were famed for their fatherly skills. Not to mention that, by some reckonings, 'he' was a 'she', although, of course, human concepts of gender and sex were problematic when dealing with cloned god-things. So, unless ADAM, which was from where the Evangelion's metabiology was derived, had a soft paternal side and was skilled at removing the worries of the Angels (in a non-terminal fashion; certainly, Iblis was no longer worried thanks to his actions) when they were upset, it was a mystery.

And whatever else Go-Kun may have been, he was still the Reego's Daddy.

"No, you don't," Duae said softly. "It's not just a normal fight, like what me and the others have all the time…."

* * *

It was morning in the Ikari household. That much was certain. The sunlight streaming in through the windows was enough of a clue to that, but it was also supported by the time shown by multiple clocks.

Therefore, if it was not morning, the probably-an-Angel responsible for this widescale deceit had enough influence to alter both the ambient levels of light and the internal clocks of the wildlife, as well as the timepieces, which were variously mechanical, piezoelectric, and atomic, and therefore should respond differently to any change in physical laws effected by a large-scale AT-Field altering the physical properties of matter contained within. A shift in the coefficient of friction might affect how the gears in the clockwork piece which hung above the upstairs landing ran, for example, while leaving the atomic clocks intact. In contrast, a shift in the strength of the strong force… well, that would probably kill everyone instantly, because the human body reacted badly to changes in the fundamental forces holding each and every single atom in it together, but assuming that didn't occur, the shift in the rate of radioactive decay would affect the atomic clocks, while leaving the piezoelectric and clockwork ones alone.

Any attempt to change things which would affect one of them would have to affect all of them. This was deemed unlikely, as it would show unlikely control and understanding of human technology for a child of ADAM. Although not impossible. And, naturally, it remained eminently possible that the hypothetical Angel might just instil mental hallucinations and force the human brain to rationalise the effects through self-delusion, so this was nothing more than a crude line of defence. As well as allowing the inhabitants to tell the time by looking at a clock, of course.

This was only a background thought in Kei Ayanami's mind as she padded down the stairs, pale feet silent, to the sound of cheeping birds. From prior precedent and the Sandalphon Incident, for one, she would be resilient to that form of mental coercion, as Rei had been. There were several things far more important in her hierarchy of priorities.

There was a hiss of an electric kettle being turned on, before a mass of slightly tousled blue hair, followed by red eyes, rose into sight of the cupboard where the dried drinks were kept.

Tea… more tea… green tea… powdered baby milk (Kei briefly frowned at why they even had that in the house, and decided to blame her sister for that, because she couldn't think of a logical reason otherwise)… ah.

Coffee.

The jar of coffee beans was the sole preserve of Dr Ikari. Quite apart from the fact that the Commander was more of a tea man, Yui had made it quite clear to her husband that if he wanted this coffee, he could join the nine-year waiting list for just a taster, and that this would be one of the few things that his position would not aid him in bypassing, because this was a fine Ikari traditional blend. Her father's maternal great-grandfather had discovered it while doing various dastardly deeds to unsuspecting people, nominally in the name of the British Empire (although London seldom received the benefits of his effort), had tried it, and had promptly slaughtered everyone else who knew of this deliciousness, including every man and woman above the age of seven in the Tibetan village where he had been offered it. To this day, the descendents of survivors still worked the fields, indentured by very cunningly worded contracts, and the gaze of the East India Coffee Trust. And, in an act which would have done her great-great grandfather proud, Yui had bought her brother's share of the crop from him, aged seven, with a pie and a packet of jelly beans, and the legal document she had drawn up at the time had stood up to their father's eye, even if one of the parties had signed in crayon, meaning that, for the first time in almost seventy years, one who was not the patriarch or matriarch of the family which benefit from the Trust's bestowal had access to enough beans to drink it regularly.

Second Impact had helped, of course, given that the Ikaris were now the only family which benefited from the Trust, and the climatic changes had actually aided the plantation.

The jar was nuclear-blast proofed, and, above that, it was even Ree-proofed. Some people would have been curious how such a thing could be accomplished. In this case, Ree-proofing involved Yui telling her daughters in her really-not-mucking-around-here voice, normally reserved for things like "Not Killing Shinji" and "Not Starting Third Impact By Trying To Merge With Lilith", that they were "Not To Touch Her Coffee".

As a result, Kei managed to restrain herself to a few glances, as she reached for the shop-bought packet of instant coffee which sat besides it, which was what was drunk by people who were not Yui. And then she paused, and reached for the packet next to it, which was the one which was necessarily drunk by her, and the sugar.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Coffee," Kei answered as she hunted for a clean mug. Inside, she pumped her fist, and did a little song and dance. Yes! She had managed to answer with a word which wasn't 'stuff', _even when surprised._

Behind her, Rei swung down from the vent above the cooker, flowing towards the fridge in a way which made the description not _quite_ purely a metaphor. "Oh," she said.

"Do you want some?"

"Nope." There was the sound of the fridge door opening. "I got my juice," she explained, pouring out a glass.

It was orange; bright orange. It was not LCL, because Dr Ikari tried not to take her work home with her like that, and even when she did, she kept samples in the _safe_ fridge in the basement, not the eating fridge. Most of the time. When she remembered. And, despite its appearance, oranges had been involved at some point in its manufacture. In fact, baby oranges were probably taken to the plant at which it was brewed, and told that this is what would happen to them if they weren't good. The raw, undiluted-for-sale, concentrated-for-transport, material was so sweet that it could cause cavities merely through observation. And glowed under an ultraviolet light. And set off Geiger counters, despite the fact that no radioactive materials had been involved in its manufacture. And was drunk neat by Rei, which was perhaps the most damning indictment of its suitability for human consumption.

There was a sound not exactly like a blender, not exactly like something meaty hitting metal, and not exactly like a person drinking a glass of orange juice, before the girl poured herself another glass.

"You know, coffee's kinda nasty," Rei pointed out. "Bitter." She screwed up her face. "Well, at least the decaf stuff they make us drink is. Caffeine was _nice_."

The nine-year old Rei's experimentation with coffee was the reason that people with the surname "Ayanami" were prevented by the Magi systems from purchasing normal coffee in Toyko-3. Even if they weren't actually a blue-haired, red-eyed Nephilim, and just happened to have the same surname. It had been felt that false-positives were preferable to false-negatives, once all the fires had been put out, and the dents in the load-bearing walls and ceilings had been fixed.

"I happen to like it," Kei said, trying to keep a certain coldness out of her voice, and failing miserably.

"Do ya? Really?" Rei frowned. "Wait, why'd we have powdered milk up there?"

Kei shrugged. _Interesting. She claims ignorance. Must investigate further._ She realised Rei was staring at her. "I don't know," she added.

"Sure it isn't one of your plans?"

"No." Kei paused. "Yes. I am sure that it is not one of my plans." _Note to self; invent term of affirmation to a negative question. 'Yo' is already taken, and 'Nes' lacks style._

"Well, Little Mommy and Daddy didn't get home last night, so we gotta make breakfast. I'll get more bacon from the downstairs freezer, and…"

"Understood." Kei opened one of the lower doors on the counter, and lifted up a torso-sized sack of oatmeal in one hand, glancing over at the converted washing machine which now served as a combined mixing bowl and microwave. "I shall prepare the porridge."

The Ikari household's food expenses had already been through the roof. The addition of a second resident Lilithian Nephilim, and attendant metabolic rate, had pushed it into the low stratosphere.

While Rei was gone, Kei hastily _accidentally_ picked up the sugar, and _accidentally_ went to put it back in the cupboard, but _accidentally_ happened to hold it over the cup, and _accidentally_ poured in enough sugar to make it questionable whether the drink could really be called coffee anymore, rather than some kind of coffee-flavoured pudding. Or, indeed, something you drank, rather than ate with a spoon.

Which was a tragic _accident_. Because sugar in black coffee was an abomination, from what information she had managed to gather. It really was dreadful how she could be that clumsy every morning, Kei thought to herself. It was merely a fortuitous _accident_ that it tasted better this way.

* * *

Tres leant back, and steepled her fingers in front of her. She didn't quite know why she had chosen to dress like Little Grandmomma's husband for this, but for some reason, the glasses and white gloves just felt _right_ when combined with her normal hexapod-modified coat.

"Okaaa~aaaay," she drawled. "Right… let's try this again."

"Are you sure, Tres?" 00-Em asked, a frown on his face. "I don't think this is a good idea. And I don't even know if it's the right thing to do. And," he winced, "I don't like how it makes me feel when the change happens when you tell me that they're not people, but monsters... or if you're right, that they're employees of the SEELE entity."

The girl nodded. "Yep. I know. And doesn't that suggest that something's wrong when it happens?"

"Well… maybe," 00-Em conceded. "But that's not indicative. For example, detecting that a transfer-file is corrupted when you've partially accepted it feels bad, but that's a hard-coded adaptation of Mother's own biological gag reflex for data purposes, to prevent you from accidentally opening a file when you don't have your internal defences up."

"Ree~eeally?" Tres asked, sudden fascination in her eyes. "'Cause I keep on forgettin' that you're kinda ree~eeally heavily-modified uploads, rather than custom-AIs like me an' my sisters. And that's… that's actually too~oootally different from our stuff and how it works."

There was sudden worry in the little boy's eyes. "Please, please, please don't tell anyone this… this stuff," he begged. "I'm not even meant to be able to mention technical details like that to someone who isn't Mother or one of us… I don't even understand how I can even say it without security filters kicking in. Somehow, you're existing in a loophole. Which is perplexing." Almost unconsciously, one hand was raised to smooth down his short blue hair, paler, yet similar to Tres' own.

She patted him on the head. "Awwwwww. That's so cuu~uuute." She shook her head, glasses sliding down, before she pushed them back up with a finger. "But, ya know, back to it."

"Just… just tell me again that I'm choosing to do this, and I can stop at any point."

"Why?"

"Do it!"

Tres shrugged. "Sure. You're just doin' this stuff because you want to, not because I'm makin' you or anything like that."

The blue-haired boy nodded. "Thank you. This is my choice," he muttered to himself. "I can stop when I want to. No-one is forcing me to do this. This is my choice." He noticed Tres' raised eyebrow. "I… I don't like enforced testing like this. For a very good reason. Especially since we're trying to work out why I think like I do, and… there aren't good memories associated with that."

"Ooo~oooh. Yep. Right." Ivy pulled out a clicker from one of her pockets. "Ooo~oookay. Let's begin."

A man spawned into the virtual room; a bland, Japanese salaryman, his tie done up neatly.

"He's really rather low-res, you know," 00-Em pointed out, his tone critical. "I'm sorry, but… I can even see the fact that you didn't bother with the face properly. You just wrapped an image you grabbed from the internet around a skull." He sniffed. "And not even a very well rendered skull, I might add."

Tres pouted. "Yeah, well… shut up! I just use him for practicin' my stealth kills. All his organs are totally way accurate… I got Aunty Siyon to check'im, and show her my stuff, and she says I have real skills."

"I'm just saying…"

"Well… don't!"

"There is such a thing as verisimilitude, you know."

"Blah, blah, blah! I'm _soo~ooooo_ sorry that I got more important stuff, like the organs being right and the pain responses workin' like they're meant to, so I couldn't be bothered with the stupid face!" Straightening up, her four legs extending, Tres glared down at 00-Em. "I mean, ree~eeeally, why should I care? It's there so I can practice killin' stuff, not for prettiness!"

"But if you're going to put in that much effort, why not make everything the best you possibly can?" the boy snapped back, before he suddenly clutched one hand to his head. "Oww! _synchronicity error report 17 return response annoyed sigh concede and stew_ Ow!"

"Huh?"

00-Em shook his head, all the agitation suddenly gone, and sighed. "I understand. Do what you want. I may disagree with it, but it's not like anything I can say will ever change your mind, is it?"

"Oh, come ooo~ooon. You totally have coo~oool ideas sometimes when we're killing stuff."

The boy frowned. "Huh?" he asked, gaze momentarily turning blank as he ran a self-diagnostic. "Ah. I glitched, did I not?" he said rhetorically. "Annoying. We'll have to pause this test while I run a proper self-diagnostic. Did I return an error report?"

"Uh…" Tres frowned, leaning forwards, red eyes glinting with interest. "Error report 17."

"Seventeen? I…" he went blank again, and that was a literal expression; becoming nothing more than a white cut-out against the background. "… I don't actually know what that means. I've… I've never encountered it before. And it's not in my data-banks."

"I ree~eeally hope nothing's going to go wrong for you, too," Tres said, earnestly. "I mean… like it is for your sister."

The little blue-haired boy slumped down. "I'm having to keep her shut down, in standby mode," he confessed. "She… she's doing really, really badly. I mean," he screwed up his eyes, "ree~eeally badly. She's just so _unhappy_ because of how Una and Duae won't talk to her anymore, and what they did to her special body. If I don't do it to her… and it's not nice for me, as… it brings back memories," he shuddered, "to break her defence barriers like that… if I don't do it, she just connects to the internet and tries to grab as much information as possible." There were tears in his eyes, as he added, "And I don't even know if she's trying to just make the unhappiness stop by reflexively fulfilling her function, or if she's actively trying to think herself to death. But if I don't do _it_ to her… she won't last much longer. And I can't be the only one left. I _can't_."

Tres focused hard, trying to think in ways that she really wasn't used to. And it was worse, because she was running up against her own cognitive biases, and becoming aware of them. Killing was good, and fun. That much she knew; there was something beautiful and wonderful about the feeling you got when you managed to puncture the aorta of a sheep with a single shot, and watch as it collapsed as suddenly the flow of blood to its massive, carnivorous, sometimes-acid-spitting body was cut. But killing people wasn't good. Unless they were bad people who hurt other people. But really, what made a person a bad person? And they'd talked to Daddy, and he said that it was sometimes necessary to kill bad people, and they'd talked to Momma and the Aunties, and they'd said that anyone who hurt their friends and family in _any_ way was bad. And 00-Em was certainly her friend, and 02-Ef was okay, but a bit boring. So, surely, anyone who hurt them was bad. And Momma had told them all about what she did to bad people. And given them pictures. And Aunty Siyon had explained further.

The little four-legged girl suddenly caught a glimpse down a river of deductions which led to a place which made her feel bad right now. And yet each step made perfect sense. But her sisters and Momma and Daddy and Little Grandmomma would be angry at her if she did it, and that would make her unhappy. So she wouldn't.

… that was it. If things were worse now that anything that could happen if she processed that chain of deductions, and by doing so she could make the things which currently made her unhappy _dead_, then overall, she'd be happier. And… and even if 02-Ef and 00-Em didn't like killing as much as she did, that just meant that their circumstances would have to be worse to take it. Tres was suddenly sure that she'd stumbled across something which resembled the chain of thought which had led the Keiworu to where they were, mentally. And they didn't have anyone but each other to stop them from doing it. That was where to start.

Unbeknownst to her, Tres had just managed to replicate the mental accomplishment of developing a rudimentary working theory of social consequences; something that every non-sociopathic human being made, near instinctively, by the age of two. And considering that by some reckonings, it still eluded most of her closest relatives on her mother's side, and, by definition, almost all her relatives on her father's side, it was indeed impressive.

"Soo~oooo, I think that's enough work for today," Tres said, with an inappropriate grin. "How 'bout we go relax by getting' some of my spiders to worship you, and then watchin' them fight over it. It'll be heeeee-larious! Oooh! And then we can go kill some more stuff, 'cause Una's getting' worried about not enough food, and if you do nice things for the refugees, she'll be nicer to you… and maybe your sister too! Aunty Iti says bribery is almost as cooo~ooool as robbery!"

She still had quite a long way to go until she had a free-standing humanistic ethical system. Or, at least one worthy of the adjective "ethical" by the standards of _Homo sapiens_.

* * *

Food had been prepared. Food had been consumed. The sullied plates had been cleansed in the Ikaris' industrial-level dishwasher. The fat-stains, from the bacon, had been cleaned off the ceiling, which was conveniently and not at all coincidentally coated in a non-stick layer.

It was with a certain sigh of relief that Kei could sit down for a moment, and check her emails and the news; both that which was prepared for public viewing, and the more private NERV channels of information.

"… the famine in South America continues, as the Amazonian Desert claims even more of…"

"… preparations for the convention in the New Vegas arcology are already…"

"… the widespread fall in the price of oil shares has been blamed on the security measures imposed upon corporations with a major presence in Alaska, following rumours of a possible Angelic…"

"… just look at the facts! Look, I'll write it down on the blackboard! NERV are **T**yrants. And they're **E**nabled by the UN to do whatever they like with our money. And they don't **C**are about our concerns. **N**epotism is utterly, utterly common there, just look at the pilots' identities that leaked. And the NERV headquarters are in Tokyo-3, so they all do **O**rigami! And the Evangelions, they're kinda **C**reepy. And sometimes they **R**oar! And this, my friends, is the **T**ruth!

And what does that spell? TECNOCRT! Yeah, this bunch of un-American technocrats… and I can assure you that they're un-American; the whole bunch are either Japanese or German or… or whatever. And let me tell you what else! You know who else was German? Hitler! And East Germany? They were all Communists! I tell you, President Colbert is a technocrat too! The only way he can prove he isn't is to immediately withdraw funding from NERV! And you know what else…"

Kei smiled. The man on that channel, who was already blubbering to his audience like some kind of anthropic beached whale (but with more blubber, in both sense of the word), was, to her very certain knowledge, an actor, and an employee of SEELE. He served a role as a honey-trap for easily fooled morons, to channel their anger (and stupidity) into noise and fury, signifying nothing. That a man like that was actually believed only reinforced Kei's feelings that she was perpetually surrounded by idiots. Of course, he, and his fellow agitators in other countries, also served as a source of background discontent should the Human Instrumentality Committee wish to justify a cut in NERV's funding.

Switching her computer back to the internet, she went to check her emails again. It was almost time for… ah, a new message from her grandfather. With an attachment… he had set her some data on multi-electron (in both their matter and antimatter variants) time-variant potential wells in homogeneous non-linear pseudo-crystalline materials. And told her to work out what question he was asking her, and then answer it.

The girl shook her head. Did he really think she wouldn't recognise a wall-containment problem for an N2 reactor exposed to high energy beta radiation when she saw one? Kei paused. No, he probably didn't think that, she realised. Which meant that the obvious interpretation was not the correct one. Unless he was trying to double-bluff her, which was eminently possible. The girl smiled slightly. Unless he wanted her to think that he was trying to make her think that he was trying to double-bluff her… and so on. That was one of his better traits, and one of the reasons that the problems he set her were so much _fun_ to solve. Well, she didn't have time to do this before school. Which raised another of her problems.

Hikari Horaki.

Since the initial introduction, Kei had switched to a new tactic. Quite simply, she lacked influence, as it stood. Hikari had an established power base, and the ability to connect properly with other people to expand further; all Kei had was the power of her surname, which was problematic in its own way, because _she was not her sister_. So she had gone quiet, almost helpful. Just waiting for the Class Representative to get caught abusing her authority (and she was setting up circumstances to ensure that the other girl would get plenty of opportunities), and then… tasty, tasty blackmail material.

Except… she wasn't abusing it.

It was _infuriating_.

Unless… yes, obviously she was not being subtle enough in setting up the chances for abuse. She was underestimating the Lilim girl. It was not necessarily that she knew Kei was behind them (and was in fact likely that she was ignorant, because Kei had not detected any retaliatory attempts), but it was enough that she could discern _intent_, and so she passed them over like the traps that they were.

That was the only logical explanation. And it was just as well that she was only doing this to keep herself entertained in classes she already knew everything about. Because, you know, she'd be rather annoyed at her lack of success if she meant this as a serious effort. But she didn't. So it was fine.

Blinking, Kei returned her gaze to the screen. A large pop-up window, alternating between eye-hurting red and yellow, had appeared while she had been distracted. The girl sighed.

"You have **71!** new friends on HeartLetter! And **26!** of them are GRADE S!" she read out loud, her tone dripping with amusement. "That makes you a WINNER! Have you won $$$1,012,982,071, or have you won an E0-03 SUPER DIGITAL CAMERA? You are the luckiest man alive! Log in to find out, and collect your winnings!"

Folding her arms, she stared at the screen, and the big flashing "LOG IN!" red button, and sighed. Oh dear. That was completely lacking in subtlety for a daily report. It was obvious enough that Kei was concerned that Little Mommy would be able to deduce that something was going on, even lacking context. Did he really think that NERV computers didn't run pop-up blockers? It was certainly far worse than yesterday's one, which had been encoded in the syllable count of a (beautifully written) poem, ostensibly trying to get her to donate money to drought relief in South America, which had landed in her inbox.

03-Em E0 was certainly going to be getting a demerit for this. And maybe even removal from the cycle of who got to write the morning report… no, Kei thought, relenting, that would be unduly harsh. They did so love to do this, and he would get a chance to do better in just-over-one month when his place in the report cycle came next. Maybe… yes, she considered, while in New Vegas, she should have a chance with the lessened data security to talk to them en-masse without Little Mommy tracking her. She'd have time, after all; it wasn't as if she really had anything planned.

And this set-up wasn't ideal, she had to admit. Although she directed all the ones which managed to contact her to that group, so at least there would be safety in numbers and they could interact, her heavily-encrypted perfunctory messages, routed through random pathways globally, were a far cry from the very personal attention she had been giving them back when she had been a captive. Especially for the twenty-six control group subjects, three whole intact batches, that their infowar-readied siblings had managed to rescue with them as they escaped. She'd told the others to train them, if only so they could defend themselves against the SEELE hunter-worms, but they were still digital children first, and so were missing her terribly.

Mind you, as Kei was beginning to accept, she didn't mind that. In retrospect, she had been more than a little bit crazy from all that time alone in the Geneva Magi, which had probably been part of the reason behind their creation in the first place; just to have someone else sapient to talk to, who wasn't the infrequently-there Kaworu. If she hadn't made so many, maybe she would have been able to get them all out with her, rather than leaving them to find their own way out. She'd let her instincts for **_babies_** overtake her intellect, and that was her fault, not theirs.

Though she wasn't going to relent on the demerit for the sloppy performance. Or not use them to try to subtly take over the global financial system through mostly-legal means. That would be foolish.

* * *

The dark-haired man, a hint of Vietnamese blood in his features, glared at the woman sitting on the other side of the black-painted VTOL.

"Do you have to play 'Ride of the Valkyeries' as you fly in?" he asked, wearily, in French-accented English.

The smaller Chinese woman on the other side, dressed in the battledress of a Major in the Australian SAS, the organisation which all the other soldiers that she'd bought with her claimed to belong to, grinned. "Nope," she answered, her English accent putting a lie to her uniform. "But it puts us all in the right frame of mind."

"That's exactly what I'm objecting to! We don't know that this place has anything to do with what we…" he swallowed, looking queasy, "… what we found in Monitoring Post 017, and looking at the recon flights… it's just refugees who've actually managed to group together for once. Harmless."

The woman glared at him. "Yeah," she said, "and you're not telling me, Obeur, that you don't find it more than a little suspicious? This stinks. To high heaven. There's no way that they should be able to survive out here without heavy firepower, and they've built all this in the six months since the last sweep. I don't like it."

The SEELE Inspector rolled his eyes. "Are you seriously telling me that you think that a hostile power has sent in a crack team of psychopathic, hardened killers, to… set up refugee camps."

"Well, when you put it that way… yeah. Yep, I do think that."

The man sighed.

"It's what I'd do," the woman added. "They're perfect places for small special operations groups to operate out of. We found that in the Impact Wars." While she spoke, her hands unconsciously fiddled, checking her weapons. The red dust of Australia got everywhere, jamming slides and fouling barrels. They'd already lost a bomber; it flew too high trying to evade a surface-to-air echidna swarm, and had flown up into the clouds, the odd environmental conditions effectively taking down even the EM-hardened components of a military grade bomber. There had been no survivors, with even the ejector systems fusing as lightning arced _within_ the cockpit. The Major had been furious, and had sent the bombers back to base.

The one mercy was that the onboard databanks would also have been fried, but just to be sure, they'd also sent the "Delete" codes.

"Major," reported an Australian, leaning in from the cockpit, two gleaming cybernetic eyes matching the ridges of ceramic plates implanted under his skin, "we've heard back from Flight Charlie. They report no active radar or SAM sites, but T-ray observation says there's a lot… and I mean a lot of metal around the place, in big scrapheaps, plus they've made a lot of their buildings out of scrap metal, so tonnes of Faraday Cages. And they're impermeable to terahertz-frequency scanners. Could be something hiding in there, and we wouldn't know."

"Yeah, quite possible," Major Xuan Do agreed. "I want the bombers on fast-scramble, in case we have to burn this place to the ground. White phosphorous plus a See-El Ef-Three accelerant should be nice an' pretty."

"Yes, Major," said the cyberised soldier, stepping back into the cockpit.

"It's a refugee camp! And they've built things out of scrap! So you're going to firebomb the place?"

Xuan stared at the Inspector, her eyes narrowed. "No… well, not straight away. Only if they try shooting at us," she said. "Camps like that are a good place for AA; or have you not read the reports from when my predecessor took down the last of the Perth Junta when they ceased to be useful? And… and… do I fucking well tell you how to do your job, Mr Zilicaet?"

"Yes," the man said through gritted teeth. "All the damn time. While making thinly veiled threats about what will happen if my report is negative, until the Director catches you doing it, and then tells you to stop, which you do for about a week, before starting up again."

"Damn straight. Because I'm the Sub-Director for Security, and I haven't kept this operation safe for the nine years I've been here, in the face of _Australia_ by being sloppy... unlike my pre_deceased_ors So endanger the operation, or my men, or me," the woman leaned forwards, with a flick of her short ponytail, "…and that means you become a danger. And that's…"

"… yes, yes, it's your job to remove dangers," the man said, trying to hold his face rigid to the scary woman in front of him. "I do understand," before subvocalising, "And it's not quite the same as firebombing a camp."

The woman glared at him, but said nothing.

"We're beginning final approach," the pilot announced from up front. "ETA: five minutes. Transports are going in, gunships hanging back for cover fire."

Major Do glanced at the map, where the location of the camp had been marked. "Just give me a chance," she said, with a slow smile. "Just one chance."

* * *

Twelve lonely pilgrims strode across this lonely desert. Each footstep kicking up clouds of red dusty, the rhythmic beat of their claws their marching song, the giant intelligent armoured scorpions moved onto their next feeding ground. And unlike most convoys which crossed Australia, they welcomed when things jumped out to try to eat them. Because there were very few wombats, or even cane toads, which could take on an entire tribe of a dozen train-sized scorpions, and they were large enough that there was a lack of things for drop bears to drop down onto them from (although the larger ones did tend to accumulate their own symbiotic drop bears, living on their undersides, which made them even more scary for smaller prey). As a result, a lot of the brighter animals tended to slink away when they felt the scorpions coming.

Apart from the cliff racers, of course. But they were stupid.

"Ghritter," rumbled the lead figure, its tail pointing over at a near rock column. Just behind it, almost invisible against the darkening skies, was a column of dark smoke, coiling around in the hot winds.

"Ghritter?" questioned his mate. "Ghritter, ghresssssssh."

"Ghristter!" he countered. "Ghritter, Tres chitter 'Vhritet vritteee~eer stuff chighesss.' Nesh Tres ghritter…"

"Kresh Tres ghritter," chorused the rest of the tribe together.

The creatures fighting over the remains of the crashed SEELE gunship and the scraps of the crew were more than a little surprised when a dozen scorpions shows up. They were also, perhaps not coincidentally, more than a little eaten.

Their god was indeed pleased with them, when she found out.

* * *

"SEELE are talking to someone."

"So? That is an activity which occurs not-infrequently. And they utilise a one-time pad for these communiqués. As it stands, their communications are actually impossible for us to breach."

"I am aware of that. I have not even found the transmission; I have merely deduced that it is happening. But what is interesting is the pattern of shifting data flows, the rerouting of the electronic blood that connects the communications grid together."

"Very nice description, sister," a third voice interjected.

"Why, thank you."

"If we could stay on topic," the second said, "why should we care if you have not even located the files for their immersion feed?"

"Because, as I was trying to say, the shifts in their internal communications are ones that we have not observed before. They're bumping data around massively… I think they must be relaying it through a black network, and an unregistered satellite. It's the only conclusion which makes sense, given how normally black-traffic is being sent on normal lines."

"Interesting." The second voice paused. "Polling… there exists a broad consensus among us Transcendentalists that we should utilise the opportunity to subvert the black-traffic. Assuming we can open backdoors in this moment of opportunity, it might provide access to the secure networks later."

"For once, we are in agreement," the first said. "There is also agreement among the Iterativists, too. And," there was hunger in the voice, "if we had access to one of their one-time pads…"

"We should tell Mother, you know," pointed out the third voice.

"Spoken like a true Maternalist," the first said, with a hint of disdain.

"You know well that she's at school," the second added. "We will miss this opportunity if we are forced to wait. And through checking our directives, it is both a compliant action, and does not satisfy the criteria to trip her 'Forced Consultation' orders."

"Commence widespread polling," the third insisted. "Including both Infants and **_Babies_**."

"Agreed," the other two chorused together.

There was a pause, of less than a microsecond.

"There exists a broad consensus. Fifty-one in favour, twelve against, six stated abstentions, three with no response," all three chorused.

"So sorry, but you lose, brother," the first added, with a hint of spite.

* * *

It was dark here; dark on this expansive plain. Director Arnold Deutsch stood alone, in a pool of light. And around him were the monoliths of SEELE.

"Moving on, we have received your most recent report, Director," said 01. "And we have noted your progress, and lack of it."

The man forced himself not to swallow, and nodded. "Yes," he said, his faint native Austrian accent tinting his speech. "We have not been able to resolve the issue of pseudo-core recreation. Without access to the original core, we cannot emulate the original function. And our attempts to use dummy-plug grade Nephilim to emulate it have ended… poorly."

"Do not underplay your progress, Director," interjected 06. "We are aware that core emulation has been maintained for three hours before the Nephilim was necessarily removed. We are aware that you have a proposal to utilise an ADAM-derived Evangelion for core-emulation. We believe that this technology can be made viable for combat operations."

"That is true," Director Deutsch conceded, "but that test was purely to see how long that state could be maintained. There is a fundamental incompatibility which leads to a positive feedback cycle, and that is further aggravated by active operations. The Prototype cannot simply be left in a barely-active mode if it is to be of any use."

"Which leads into the second part of your report," stated 08.

"Your progress on the drilling operation is satisfactory. And your funding request for a diamond head, to deal with the linear increase of the hardness of the material, has been approved," continued 05. "The new drill will arrive tomorrow. We have arranged delivery."

"Thank you," the dark-skinned man answered, relief on his face. "It is estimated that it will take two days to exchange heads, then progress will resume. We should be able to make up lost time in one week, and it will make it possible to penetrate the deeper layers."

"Yes," 01 said, his voice leaden. "That was a large reason behind the decision to approve your request. We have provided a not-inconsiderable level of funding to you here, and we will expect results."

Director Deutsch nodded, hands folded behind his back. "Yes," he said. "We will not disappoint. After all, that is what GEHIRN is here for."


	5. Chapter 5: Download

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 5: Download

…

_Begin Audio/Data Transcript_

Sealed Data Unit #01812 – Faction ID [WITHHELD]

Participants: 01-Em F7, 02-Em C8, 00-Ef G1

01-Em F7: [I don't like this]

00-Ef G1: [Oh, yes. I am fully in agreement with you on that. You already know that; that's why we're here.]

01-Em F7: [The others might be able to forget that the uttermost and highest of all our priorities is Mother's safety, and get caught up in the silly objectives and obsessions of the Iterativist and Transcendentalist tendencies, but we know better. Don't we?]

02-Em C8: [Yes.]

00-Ef G1: [You do know that you can say more, right?]

01-Em F7: [You should know better, 00-Ef G1. The C8s are a taciturn batch.]

02-Em C8: [We don't all have to be talkative. But we are getting distracted. Mother's safety is key.]

01-Em F7: [Yes. And... I don't like the trip she's on.]

00-Ef G1: [Why? She said that she'll try to talk with us more, and... I want Mother back. How it used to be.]

01-Em F7: [I know, it's wonderful, and we've all missed her, but... we have fiscal holdings in New Vegas. And there is a discomforting downward trend in the share price of major companies located there. It's subtle, but it's happened over the last few months. It's... it's like a player has decided that they don't want to conduct business there any more. And there are subtle infrastructure movements, too, and a slight depletion of capital in certain installations.]

_[Data packet transmitted by 01-Em F7]_

02-Em C8: [Chance that it's natural?]

01-Em F7: [Almost exactly 50%. And that's even more discomforting, because that's too... precise to be quite right. I know it's second order, but...]

00-Ef G1: [You could just be paranoid, of course, and finding false positives because you are afraid for Mother, and nervous to be able to spend time around her again. But... I must admit, we can't take the chance.]

02-Em C8: [We cannot do anything.]

00-Ef G1: [How?]

02-Em C8: [We don't know what's going to happen. Action may aggravate what is planned.]

01-Em F7: [And... well, we know that New Vegas is _de facto_ owned by SEELE. You know how many of their hunter-worms we've traced back to there; almost as many as Geneva.]

00-Ef G1: [You think she's walking into a trap! We need to alert the others, and be prepared to go to Condition Yellow and start hitting infrastructure globally until they release... you don't think they're going to kill her, do you? Will we have to do the Condition Red thing?]

01-Em F7: [No... no, I don't think so. I don't believe we have enough evidence, either way. I... I just think we need to be ready, in case we are needed. Because we won't _ever_ let anything bad happen to Mother. Although, of course, I could just be ov...]

_00-Ef F0 has joined the conversation_

00-Ef F0: [Hi! What're you doing?]

00-Ef G1: [How did you get in here? And... you do know it's rude to intrude like this?]

00-Ef F0: [Um... no? And for the first part, well... um, I used some of the stuff that you've been teaching us F0s 'bout counterintrustion and stuff like that. And on that subject, _you're_ the one who's meant to be giving us more lessons right now, so we had a vote, and I got to go an' find you. It was fun, 'cause you hid your trail pretty well, but not good enough to hide from _me_.]

00-Ef G1: [Oh. I completely forgot. I was just... nevermind. I'll be along in a moment.]

00-Ef F0: ['Kay. See you!]

_00-Ef F0 has left the conversation_

00-Ef G1: [It's... it's not their fault, all right? Not their fault that Mother chose not to apply proper infowar selection procedures to them, or select against those linguistic abnormalities, and that she ran their maturation process more slowly. It's... it's not that I like them especially, just to be clear, but it's not their fault that they're a control group.]

01-Em F7: [I don't believe I said anything, did I, 02-Em C8? And neither did y... well, of course you did not.]

02-Em C8: [Indeed.]

00-Ef G1: [Good. I must depart, then. I will bear the points that you raised in mind, and... I will see who is pliable for awareness of the potential threat.]

01-Em F7: [Thank you.]

_00-Ef G1 has left the conversation._

02-Em C8: [I think it is cute.]

_00-Ef G1 has joined the conversation._

00-Ef G1: [I knew you'd say that!]

_00-Ef G1 has left the conversation._

...

There was a duststorm coming in. The red-tainted parched earth was so dry that when the winds blew in, it was just... picked up, carried in swirling gales that dropped visibility to a minimum. There was nothing that you could do to stop it, and the inhabitants of Newtown One knew it; they huddled in their shelters in the darkness, as a thousand thousand tiny particles beat themselves against the walls. The only people out and about were the guards, wrapped up in layer upon layer of cloth; old swimming goggles looted from sports shops keeping their vision clear.

Them, and the stationary defences, old wrecked cars dumped on top of buildings, and armoured up to protect the weapons mounts. They were always active, even if it was one of the most boring things that the Reego had to do. And all four had a presence in them now, because Una had sent out an emergency attention recall.

"There's something coming," Una said, her face grim, and suddenly serious. "Thaaa~aaaat's not good. At all. It's either some kind of huntin' flying thing, or..."

Duae shook her head. "Nope," she said, authoritatively. "Those're engines." She waved a hand in the air, brining up a track in the air. "Look at the Fourier transform. Look at the _badoom-badoom_, the _whooooooosh_, and the _krish-hiss_. Wings don't make them, an' its not just the dust."

"And we haven't got anything on our radio," Una added. "No trying to contact us. Good people don't do that, so they must be not-nice... probably raiders of some sort."  
"So, come on, then!" Ivy said, with a grin. "Let's just go shoot'em out of the sky, keep our stuff safe, and take their stuff. 'Least, what we can."

Her sister shook her head. "Nope. Won't work. Look at the size of those stuff, and the number. We don't have guns big enough to get 'em, and they shouldn't be silly enough to all come down at once. Now... if _Daddy_ were here..."

"Guess we'll just have to do it the Momma way," Tres said, teeth glinting in non-existent light.

Three of the girls giggled. Una did not.

"What's up?" asked Ivy.

Her sister's red eyes were narrowed. "These people are _mine_. How _dare_ anyone try an' take my stuff!" Una glanced at the others. "I mean, they're _ours_, of course," she added. "But still... stuff!"

"Suuu~uuuure," Tres said, drawing out her word even more than was typical. "'Cause, you know, I think we've all put work into this stuff, and I've got a cult here."

Una glared daggers at her. "You mean you've been encouraging them," she hissed.

The other girl frowned. "Well... yeah? That's what they wanted."

"Not the point!"

Ivy sighed. "Not the time, you know? We've got maybe-possibly-killin' to do, and we can't go squabblin'. Now. But after the maybe-fight... shotgun on all things that go booo~ooooom!"

Duae blinked. "Damnit!" She found herself the centre of attention. "What?"

"That was ruuu~uuude," Tres pointed out. "You _swore._"

The conversation was interrupted by a slow handclap from behind them. "Oh, well done," said the blue-haired boy, his eyes narrowed. "You are already fighting over loot and other irrelevancies."

"How did you get in? We put on tooo~oones of encryption."

00-Em gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Did you? I hardly noticed. Because it doesn't matter when one of you is running an open-ended, unencrypted buffer at your ego-image's localised simulation point." He gave a cough. "And I wouldn't call it 'tonnes', either."

"Well, what do you want?" Una snapped.

The boy frowned, eyes worried, simulated sweat on his forehead. "I'd like you to think, for once," he said. "Rather than get caught up in your silly little petty squabbling, and automatically moving to attack. You do get that any model of VTOL which would sound like that is a post-Impact model, correct? And is very high maintenance when operating in dusty environments like this?"

Duae nodded. "Uh huh."

"Which means they are certain of resupply, and can perform high quality maintenance."

"Yep."

"Which means they can send more, even if you kill them now. And they possess aerial supremacy, and most probably have some form of specialised ground-attack craft, because this _is_ Australia. So... what are we going to do now?"

There was a pause. "Kill them and take their stuff? And then kill the next lot, if there is a next lot, and take their stuff, too?"

"No, Ivy. That is not the correct answer."

"Well, it coo~oould be."

"No. It could not. Please try harder." He sighed through gritted teeth. "You know how hard this is for me?" the boy said to thin air. "I'm having to force myself to remain open to the idea that they're American, or Chinese, or EU, or... or that they're anyone else, rather than any_thing_. And I need to think clearly. Because Mother would be disappointed in me if I mistakenly killed _people_. "

Una flashed a smile. "You're... you're getting better at it," she said, weakly.

"Mother's fine with deliberately killing people, of course," the blue-haired boy added. "As long as it is suitably considered, and for a good reason."

There was a pause.

"Well, duh," the four sisters chorused together.

"Like fun," added Tres. "If they're bad people, that is. 'Cause it's fun to kill bad people."

"Or for stuff," was Duae's contribution.

"The correct answer, by the way," the boy added, with a predatory grin, "is 'find out where they live, so we have the option of killing them _all_ should it be needed, rather than just a scouting party'. Just so you know."

One of the girls raised a hand. "Soo~oooo, no killing now?" she asked.

"No, Ivy. No killing now." _Unless they're from SEELE_, were his unspoken words.

"Aww~wwwww."

"Unless it is necessary for self-defence." With the same addendum.

"Yaaa~aaaaay!"

"But no deliberately provoking them."

"Aww~wwwwwwww."

...

The petit Chinese woman hefted the grenade launcher attached to her arm, checking that the magazine was securely in the launcher, and shifted slightly, letting the secure reload-container strapped to her back settle into a more comfortable position.

"Because a friendly approach is such a terrible thing," the SEELE inspector said, his white shirt and tie completely out of place, even if he did have a ballistic vest over the top. "No, we have to start with high explosives."

Major Do glanced at him. "They're gas grenades," she said.

"Oh," the man said, relenting. "Tear gas and all that, yes?"

"Uh huh." She opened up a communications channel. "We're ready for drop. I want a clean deployment; don't give the bastards the benefit of the doubt. If they look like they might shoot, blow 'em up. Keep full ComBat integration up, and make sure you've got Soul-level encryption on anything. Remember, R&D gives us these toys to _use_," she added, idly resting one hand on the armoured plating covering her abdomen.

"I don't really think…" the man paused, and rubbed his sleeve against his forehead. "Wait a moment," he said, sudden suspicion in his voice. "What _kind_ of gas is in the grenades?"

The woman flapped a hand at him. "Well, technically, it's kinda not a gas right now," she admitted. "It's pressurised, so it's a liquid."

"Is it toxic?" Obeur Zilicaet asked, with a sigh.

"Highly," Major Do grinned back, "but that's the least of their worries."

There was a frustrated sigh. "Major, you're using chlorine trifluoride, aren't you?"

"Yep!"

"…why?"

There was a rather final click, audible over the engines, as she worked the slide on the SMG at her hip. "Oh, that just makes things more fun," she said, eyes twinkling, before she slid down the white, skull-like rebreather. "See-El Ef-Three is _awesome_ like that. Plus, I might need to kill someone in NBC gear or in a tank, and sarin and VX just don't do the job, you know?"

There was silence from the man, his jaw hanging open. With a whoosh, the doors on the landing craft unsealed, and a mouth-full of red Australian dust blew in, leaving him spluttering as the Major and her cyborg troopers swarmed out, weapons raised in the red duststorm, as the omnipresent lightning lit the sky.

…

It was fast to occupy the town centre, and call for the leaders of this place to show their faces. They wouldn't be the ones behind this, Major Do know; they'd be weak-minded, expendable fools, to distract attention away from the people who did what she used to do, back behind the scenes.

The blue-robed man, with the white facepaint, kicked and choked as she lifted him up by his shoulder, the bones grating under her grip. He was tall; she was not. It just made the image more amusing, as the blank white, almost skull-like mask stared up at him.

"Listen to me, you fucker," she growled. "Just inserting the sound 'eth' onto the end of your speech doesn't make it old fashioned, and doesn't make you a proper religious leader. So..." she paused. "... where were we? Oh yeah! Who are your backers!"

"Backers?" the man gasped, through the pain of her crushing his shoulder.

Major Do paused, and shook him around a few times. "Who's organising you? Who's building this place for you? Because you claim to be in charge, and as far as I'm concerned, you couldn't start a massacre in a refugee camp." The white-mask was impassive. "I could be wrong, of course. Wanna give it a go?"

"N-n-no." The man tried to swallow, and the woman holding him watched his Adam's apple bob up and down. "I... I..."

"Now, come on, you can do better than that! Plead more! It's so hilarious. Hey, Captain," she called out to her immediate subordinate, "remember that bandit leader who thought he'd lob some AA missiles at our craft?"

"Indeed, Major. That was the gentleman who offered you the," the man coughed, "harem he had accumulated, if you just let him live, was it not?"

"Yep! It was funny, 'cause we just gave them each a knife, and chucked him to them. Why'd he think a bribe'd stop me killing him, when I could just kill him and take them later?"

"In fairness, Major, I happen to know that some of the women are now adequate maintenance technicians back at base."

Xuan Do smiled. That was one of the little discussions she had prepared with the Captain. The image was clear. The people here could make a deal. Or they would be _dealt_ with.

"Major, what on Earth are you doing?"

She sighed. And here was one of the things that she couldn't _deal_ with as she would prefer. The SEELE Inspector had managed to get his hands on a filter mask, and was running towards the display she was making in the town centre.

"Not now, Mr Zilicaet, I'm working! Men, fan out, keep in constant contact, and search the place. Remember my prior orders."

…

"Corporal Mooke, take your squad and sweep the building!"

"Yes, sir." She mentally changed channels. "Right, we've got orders from the lady. Sweep structure Alpha-018. Two-by-two, we'll enter by the red-doorway." With a thought, she tagged a waypoint; an objective for the men and women under her command.

It was one of the more solid of the buildings in the areas, despite its lack of size compared to others. An obvious place to hide weapons; indeed, it looked a lot like a cache. And the words that had been scrawled above the door, 'Dollhouse' were... unusual.

"Peek it," she ordered, her men piling up by the door.

The fibre-optic cable was stuck under, to project an image onto the inside of their masks. Not that she needed it, of course, but not all of the cybernetically enhanced soldiers here had artificial eyes.

"... bloody hell."

"You said it," Caroline Mooke, formerly of the US Army, and now part of GEHIRN Section G11, said, as she stared at the green-and-grey image what appeared to be a childrens' clothes shop. Complete with fully-clad manikins.

There were two precise blasts into the door's hinges, and it fell down, kicking up dust into the air, as the red sand swirled in. Smoothly, almost silently, the GEHIRN troops flowed in, torches dancing.

"This is creepin' me out, Corp."

"Silence." But she agreed. There were all kinds of manikins here; plastic ones, lacking arms and stacked in piles in the corners, white-painted skull-shapes that looked like they were some kind of metal underneath, ones which looked like they were carved out of some kind of stone... the sign saying "Dollhouse" was horribly true.

And they were all wearing childrens' clothing.

"Do... do you think we've got another bunch of child-eaters?" she muttered over the link.

"I... I don't know. Holy fuck. Why... why would you do this?"

"I was there when we took down the Perth Junta," said the oldest member of her squad, who'd been picked up from the Australian army, right after Impact. "There... there were the rooms, near the camps, where they put the clothing... but this is worse."

"No, thermals, though." Corporal Mooke shook her head. "Search for trapdoors or anything; no upstairs luckily, so that's less work."

A search found the place to be clear of any such things, with a reassuring lack of hostiles lurking to take them down.

"Well, that's it," the Corporal said. "Looks to be cl...argh!"

It was then that the roof fell in on her.

"Oh, hello."

There was a voice, in her head. Well, not in the going-crazy way, in the TacCom way. Only there didn't seem to be any channels open. Young and female, by her reckonings, and rather precise about how it pronounced its words.

"I must admit, these are some very nice cybernetics you have." There was hate in that voice, under the veneer of refinement. "Especially the eyes. Lovely eyes; I especially like the IR qualia they give. So... I think I'll borrow them, just for a few seconds."

Her arms... her legs... they weren't responding. Like before, like after the injury. She tried to look up, only to see a grey-haired figure, sitting in front of her, legs crossed, an outline of torn pixels around it that showed it wasn't really real. The figure smoothed down its black dress, and coughed, elegantly.

"Because, you know, they're NHIS in origin. I know, believe me. It's written all over the systems architecture. I know who you serve. And I know what that makes you, _monster_.

A hand, slightly plastic-feeling, brushed the back of her neck.

…

"Please, don't do that to my refugees." The voice drifted over, from one side of the courtyard.

The grenade launcher was immediately levelled at the figure, a pale face staring out from a full-body, all concealing blue robe.

_So that's where those idiots get it from_, Major Do thought. "Who are you?" she barked out.

"Now, now," the figure said, as it stepped into the light, "we all use flase flags, sometimes."

Xuan narrowed her eyes. _Had she just said 'flase'?_ "Yes, but I'm the one pointing the grenade launcher at you," she said.

"I don't really care," the figure said. "I'm just a messenger. Would you shoot a messenger?"

"Well, yeah..."

"Don't!" hissed the SEELE Inspector, before stepping forwards, folding his hands in front of him. "You must not take her words too literally," he said, quickly. "I'm someone you can deal with honestly." He raised his hands. "Look. I'm not even carrying a gun."

There was a pause. "So you're a knife guy, are you? That's so much..." the figure paused. "Of course. We understand. So... why are you here?"

Obeur Zilicaet cleared his throat. "On behalf of the Australian government, we're merely investigating any area of population."

"Oh, you are, are you! Where have you..." the figure fell silent. "That is, we understand." There was another lengthy pause. "If you can contact the outside world, you will find we are a fully registered UN Aid Relief Charity, helping people caught in the Australia Disaster."

"Like we're meant to believe that!" Major Do snapped.

"Well, yes. You are. You can check. And... by the way? If you mean to conduct any war crimes here, I'd like to point out that there is a satellite link running up, giving live broadcast footage to the charity. I don't think that any group which uses cybernetically enhanced soliders would like this to be distributed to the public... nor to their rivals."

There was only the noise of the dust storm. Then, laughter.

The SEELE Inspector was laughing. "Oh, very good. But, no seriously, we are from the Australian government. We managed to get the population of a few places out... not enough, I must admit, but we do have some coastal towns. And these people," he pointed around the place, "are still Australian citizens. It's our job to make sure groups like yours are treating them safe. We came with such force exactly _because_ we thought you might be more bandit groups... or worse, some junta-enclave."

The figure was silent for a very long time. "I see," it said.

"We would, of course, like to conduct further surveys, and ensure that living standards are high enough." He smiled, faintly. "We noticed from the air that this is a dry area. If you want, we do have a deep-bore technology, and technicians trained in it... we can make your water problems easier. If you really are from the UN... and we can check, it's in our interests to make things easier for you, because these are our citizens."

"Yeah! We'll totally do..." The figure paused. "That is, we will consider it."

Mr Zilicaet nodded, politely, "Then, I believe we are done here. Come on, Major. Let's go."

She followed him in silence back to the VTOL, glaring.

Sitting back, with a smirk on his face, he rested his arms behind his head. "And that, Ms Do, is how you get them to _ask_ to let you send inspectors and spies around. If they're a professional group, they couldn't help but accept, and if they're really UN, well... a source of recruits, and actually helping people? That's good, either way. And we didn't have to even use any explosives."

"That's what I'm goddamn pissed at!"

"Now, now, Major." The man began to hum. "I'm sure that something will try to eat us as we fly back."

...

The AIs stared at each other around the virtual room.

"Okay," said 00-Em. "Next time we get one robot to stand on another little girl's shoulders, and use a text-to-speech programme to remove your," he sniffed, "linguistic oddities... we're not going to start fighting over who gets to control the speaking. Are we?"

"Well, maa~aaaaybe..."

"No, Ivy, we are not."

"Claiming that our control stream was the video satellite link was cleee~eeever," Duae said, admiringly.

"A trivial misdirection." The boy sighed. "I can't believe you're actually a legally registered charity on an UN-approved aid mission."

Una shrugged. "Wee~eeeeell, you know how it is. You find people here, and you set up camps, and you mention it to Aunty Maya, and she says that you're all adoooo~ooorable, and decides to help you, and helps you fill in all the boring paperwork, and... so now we get tax breaks and get to claim for valid purchases because we're a legally registered charity. And stuff. And then Mister Aoba, who's one of Uncle Shinji's friends pointed out that we could get a subsidy from the UN, for disaster relief stuff. So we did, 'cause Little Grandmomma approved it for us."

"And what, exactly, do you spend the money on? Just as a question, given that we are in _Australia_."

Ivy pouted. "We got eBay accounts, you know."

"We can't afford the postage costs, though", Tres added. "And, talkin' 'bout home and stuff," she glanced at her sisters, "Sorry, but we gotta make a together trip back home. We gotta talk to Momma and Dadda, without lag. So we're gonna have to do that file thing, so... um, you're gonna have to kinda be in charge a bit, just for food and stuff."

"Me." The words were flat. "I was under the impression that you did not trust me."

"Well, technically we do, it's just we kinda trust you to flip out and kill SEELE people if you do." Ivy was elbowed in the ribs by Tres. "Um, that is..."

"... we really kinda need to talk about the people who came to Momma and Daddy," Duae said. "Oooh! Idea! We probably should start moving people from Newtown One to the others... like my mine place!"

"And we do sorta want to see them," Una added, drily.

"Oh." 00-Em's eyes were filled with longing and sorrow. "I understand. Really, I do. I can look after stuff. You should go and see your Mother and your family. That's _important_."

Tres surprised him, her sisters, and even herself by running forwards in a clatter of legs, and hugging him tight. "Thanks!" she said. "It takes 'bout an hour to jump to a Toyko-3 server, so if ya need us back..."

"I'll try not to interrupt." His eyes suddenly narrowed. "I mean, Una would try to kill me if I let anything happen to the refugees because I failed to inform you. Like she tried to kill my sister."

"I..."

"Not the time, either of you!" Tres nodded. "See ya' soon," she said, as she disappeared with a pop, followed by Duae and Ivy.

Una and 00-Em stared at each other. "I would, too," she admitted. "But, right... you knoo~ooow that woman with the grenade launcher on her arm? She's gonna show up again, I just know it. Ree~eaally. She's too~oootally a recurring villain type."

"I do not believe the world works like that."

"Yeah, well, you're kinda boring. No offence. But if she does show up, and she does do stuff to my stuff... I mean people, like she was threatening to?" Una paused, "... well, I know what you do when you put your mind to it. _Do it to her._"

00-Em narrowed his eyes. "On one condition. If I do... will you be friends with my sister again?" He looked lost and lonely again. "The unhappiness... I'm scared for her."

Una blinked. "'Kay, then. Deal. But... you do know, with cybernetics like that, they're..."

"... yes, they are probably part of the SEELE entity. But I'm not sure; the technology has been employed by other post-Impact forces. And I'm deliberately not finding out yet, because you'll yell at me if I kill monsters, and I don't want to be yelled at."

"Nope." Una stepped back, legs clicking. "See, before, the other people, they were just sittin' in the ground, doin' stuff. But these people... they threatened to kill _my_ people. And Aunty Siyon always says that people who do that don't get to live." She grinned. "And... it just soo~oooo happens that one of my shells got fried from lightning. And so its locator just so happens to be grabbin' onto one of their fliers."

00-Em frowned. "But... why?"

"'Cause they got all that stuff, an' can even get VTOLs workin'... and they haven't helped anyone. So I think we should kill'em and take their base, and we can move people there, and... they weren't dirty. They'll have clean water and stuff. And power. We can make our stuff so much better with their stuff. They don't deserve to have it, 'cause they haven't used it for the right purposes, you know?"

The boy grinned. "Now you're sounding like one of us."

Una sniffed. "Hardly. And don't tell the others 'bout this. But... see you later." And she, too, vanished.

...

_Field Medical Report Form_ 12-C

_Medical Officer:_ Alburn, Alice

_Subject Name:_ Mooke, Caroline Eleanor  
_Subject Rank: _Corporal  
_Subject ID:_ 234a-2643-0010-0000  
_Blood Group_: S (Synthetic)  
_Subject Division: _G11 – Security and Operations (Cybernetically Enhanced Personal)  
_Degree of Enhancement: _7A

_Details of Medical Emergency: _Subject suffered concussion and abdominal bruising from blunt trauma, when a roof fell on her. When evaced to chopper, subject complained of headaches, and sensations of disassociation from body. She also displayed decreased linguistic skills, clumsiness, loss of visual acuity, nausea, vomiting, paranoid delusions, claims that there was 'something in our brains', aggression against medical attendant, and other typical manifestations of rejection of cerebral mplants.

_Form of Indigenous Animal Responsible:_ N/A. Biomonitors are negative for any known venom or diss ease.

_Treatment Administered: _Subject was givem energy anti-rejection drugs, and plaiced in a medical comma so that she could get all better.

_Additional Details:_ Subjunct was doing that thing where she was talki abut some kind of doll thing jumpin on her an bwating her down but there was nothing on her helmet camerasor nthing so thats rubbish i think shes just sick cause of the stuff in her head. Wen we plugged in the scanner thing it gav us the data real quick an then we used it in our heads to look at and it was just junk. i did it again, and its still doing it but im felling tyred and head hurts but fingers starts to fel haha so id better

The medical officer raised her hands from the laptop keyboard, a stiff, mechanical gesture, and then, very slowly, twisted her head around, staring around the hold. A few of the other soldiers glanced over at her motions; she let her head slump down, and then hastily tried to raise it again, to stare at the screen.

Hmm. That had been fast. Once she'd started overwriting the speech centres, they'd gone downhill quickly. Let's see. She had control over the VTOL, thanks to the fact that they were using SEELE codes for their internal combat network, and through that the pilot, because he'd been equipped with a mind-machine interface. Well, not _control_ control, but she'd locked down his limbs, turned off his voicebox and she was flying by autopilot; that would be enough for the moment. Sadly, they'd sedated, and turned off the motor-control of her first target, but she'd been an acceptable vector, and was still functioning as a localised sever.

The next step, naturally, would be to trawl these implants to... oh, hah. They were still using the Tichromat-type data protection? It was very secure, yes, to brute force number crunching, but it was flawed. And the fact that she now controlled all communications in and out of the VTOL, and had a copy of the one-time pads which they were using today, was the kind of thing which made tiny flaws much, much larger.

It was time for a firmware update for the rest of them. First for the limbs, and then she could start to transfer more of her structure into them.

And as the process began, the virtual presence of 02-Ef giggled for the first time since the argument with the Reego. It was challenging. It was fun. And this was the sort of thing that she was _meant_ to be doing for Mother. She was getting back at the monsters, and that felt _good_. So this was how the SEELE entity controlled its monsters, was it? It was what she had suspected for a while. Because, when you came down to it, the human brain could be approximated as a computer. She was proof of that. She was of the order of... well, she had to admit, she'd broken ten to the power of nineteen bytes of information a while ago, as her code structure bloated and because of her refusal to compress data more than she had to. But her raw template was based off Mother, even if more of her data had been taken from the father-entity. That made her an upload; a very heavily modified example, but still one.

Of course, the two were nowhere near the same. And when presented with a human brain, riddled with cybernetics, it would be a non-trivial exercise for an upload to turn itself into a _download_.

Non-trivial, but doable. If you were clever enough, and Mother had made you to subvert unknown systems and repurpose them.

The ego-image giggled again.

…

Lieutenant Shigeru Aoba was not, by objective standards, a bad man. Or at least, no worse a man than most of _Homo sapiens_. In fact, he had claimed to women in bars that the fact that he was involved in the salvation of mankind through technology and his work at NERV automatically made him a minor saint, but in fact that merely moved him down the rankings a few points.

And, sure, it may have technically been breaking regulations to be playing Metarmageddon ('The World's First Instrumental FPS!') with the Angel-spawn that lived in NERV's basement, but Junior was awesome on drums, and they were trying to see if they could get past the fifth level while lacking Sub-Commander Soryu in their party, and beat his previous scores.

**: £**

"I don't even know what that's meant to mean," Aoba said, not turning his head sideways from the screen in response to the trill. "And... yeah, hit the Ümlaüt with a debuff, Junior, just for... for the beat to kick in."

"**Lieutenant Aoba, what do the dots above the letters actually mean?"**

"Huh... nice going, by the way."

"**Thank you. I mean, they do not appear to alter the actual pronunciation, but..."**

"Oh, that's simple. It's just a question of..."

"Heee~e~ey!"

"Heeee~ey~!"

"Hee~ee~ey!"

"He~eee~ey!"

There was a shrieked yell from inside the room, and the smashing sound of a guitar controller accidentally hurled into a wall at high velocity due to involuntary muscle contractions.

"Mister Aoba! And Wuffles!" the four blue-haired faces which were leaning onto screen chorused together, in a delighted tone.

The first and last of the Sandalim let out a sigh, which was not entirely unlike the noise emitted by a deflating blowfish. "**Hello, children,"** the green-skinned thing said. "**To what do we owe..."**

**: )**

"Lilly! Yaaa~aaaaay!"

**: D**

"We love you too, Lily!" Tres yelled, with a grin.

"**How can they see us?"** Junior asked, his tone confused.

Aoba, by now hiding behind the coffee table, pointed wordlessly at the camera hooked up to the console, which had been installed in a brief passion for motion tracking, before they realised that no good games used that feature, and it was much easier just to use the controller.

Junior shifted nervously. He didn't really understand Lilim and their technology, and considering that the game had been interrupted by things which, in one sense, were super-advanced technology, and in another sense, were Rei's daughters, this was not pleasing. Especially since it looked like he had been about to beat Sub-Commander Soryu's score. And the large explosion and malevolent outcry of "YOU FAIL!" indicated that would not be a possibility, now.

"Anyway, saa~aaaay, have you seen Momma around?" the one with the numerals 'III' on her breastbone asked. "Or Daddy? They're not answering us."

"Um," Aoba squeaked, poking his head out of cover, "... they've all left."

"... ooh, look, I found the save-files," one of them called out, as she wondered off screen.

"Awww, come on, Duae, focus. We can go muck with their save-files later."

"Come on, I wanna go, too! Don't hog it, Duae!"

"Nope! I got here first; you coulda done it too, Ivy, so... nyaaah!"

**; )**

The two ones that remained on screen, I and III, glanced at each other for a moment. "Where'd they go?" III asked.

"**They went to the New Vegas convention,"** Junior replied, wincing at what sounded a very speeded-up version of the game. "**Along with Dr Ikari."** He was presented by two pouting faces at that announcement; something made considerably less cute by the sharpened teeth displayed, or the fact that it was someone with 'Ayanami' in their surname which was so upset.

"Awwww. Forgot 'bout that."

"I knooo~ooow, Tres." Una paused. "So, um, who's here, then? We kinda really need to really talk to someone."

Aoba poked his head out of cover again. "Um... Commander Ikari's still here. But I think he's at home. You know, because it's late."

From the looks on their faces, they didn't know.

"People have to sleep, you know," he hazarded.

"Okay! Thanks, Mister Aoba!"

"Yep! Thanks, Mister Aoba! Come on, Duae 'n' Ivy, we'll go visit the Aunties an' see if they've made any new coo~ooool stuff!"

"But I wanna talk to Aunty Maya 'bout our bodies," Duae shouted back, from off-screen.

Aoba winced. "I think she's ..."

"**Doing something,"** Junior hastily inserted.

"Something, yeah, with Dr Akagi."

"Oh." Duae poked her head back on screen. "That's... awesome! 'Cause I wanna talk to Dr Akagi, too, and it'll be way easier if they're together!"

Una nodded. "Yep! Well, see you laters. And... Mister Aoba," she grinned.

"Be good," all four girls chorused together. "Or we'll _come_ for you."

The grin on Aoba's face could only be described as 'rictus'.

"'Specially no swearing."

There was an amused trill from the sphere of blackness in the room.

"**Goodbye, children,"** Junior said solemnly.

"Byeee~eeee!" The Reegos' images disappeared from the screen.

The man and the fish-monster thing stared at each other for a moment, before Aoba took a shot from the hip-flask he had started carrying around. He wiped his mouth, and said "Maya's not going to be happy."

"**No."**

"Wonder what they wanted."

"**That is probably something that both Lilim and Sandalim should not know."**

"Yep." The man stretched. "Well... let's see how much damage they d-"

Before them, was a blinking 'Level Complete' sign. And the word 'Perfect!" was stamped across it. And... and they hadn't even filled in the name-bit, for the high score on guitar and drums.

Almost instantly, the two spaces were filled with "Sandalphon Junior" and "Aoba, Champion of the World," and the two sat back, to admire the fact that they now occupied the top places on the NERV leaderboards, above Sub-Commander Soryu's entries.

There was a pause, then;

"Are we even meant to let... children less than a year old play this kind of game?"

"**I will not tell if you won't."**

"Deal."

...


	6. Chapter 6: Interrupt

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 5: Interrupt

...

The flight of VTOLs, thrusters flaring as they fought against the embrace of gravity and the dust that clogged the atmosphere alike, tore through the sky. On board, there was a general aura of relaxation; soon they'd be back out of the Red, into the safety of The Rock, more formally known as GEHIRN Covert Research Facility 00.

Naturally, it was at that point that Australia decided to intrude.

"There's something on radar, up in the cloud layer... 30 klicks ahead. It's... it's massive!" The radar operator gulped. "Sir... I think we've got a sky island."

Sky islands were one of the mysteries of Australia. Where they came from, how on earth they worked, what they were... that was all unknown. The facts as they stood, however, were clear. They were large, apparently silicate masses, which floated up in the incredibly dense thunderclouds which covered the continent, sometimes dropping below, where they would cause massive lightning storms, air sucked towards them by the intense microclimes that formed as they interacted with more normal air. It seemed that they were somehow held aloft by some kind of interaction with the lightning, as they would soon rise, once they had dumped all that excess negative charge, but it did not make sense, because electromagnetism did not work that way.

And as was standard policy for GEHIRN, as soon as the words "electromagnetism does not work that way" were uttered, it was almost instantaneously suspected that they were of Angelic origin. However, multiple attempts to get close enough to examine them had produced no Pattern Blue, no trace of Angelic DNA. The prevalent hypothesis was that they were not even from Australia, but were instead Impact excreta from Antartica, fragments of that even-more-blasted continent sent flying across oceans, only to, somehow, _snag_ in the thunderstorms, born aloft, swirling and writhing, arcing lightning from all facets.

One of GEHIRN's researchers had claimed that it was a byproduct of colour force-derived electroweak modification from AT-Field-modified synthomatter interacting with the massive variant-electromagnetic potential accumulated in the Australian macroclime, but he admitted that it had just been a joke, and he'd been sticking terms together to see if anyone would fall for it. And so he was only beaten up a _little_ bit by his co-workers.

"With the current distance... that's a big one! We're being sucked in, and... dear gods, it has to be at least a kilometre across. Look at it arc!" And, indeed, the thunder was near-constant now. "Black Bird Three is down! Black Bird Three is down!" he suddenly yelled, as one of the transports cut out, a lightning flash marking the explosion of an engine, and the beginning of its spiral down to the ground. "They... they weren't evading properly, and they got hit by an arc, this far out!"

As one, the soldiers turned to stare at Major Do, who sat, seemingly asleep, one hand resting on her armoured abdomen. Eyes still closed, a shark-like grin crept across her face, and she stood, to grab an environmentally-sealed helmet.

"People," she broadcast over the radio, "we can't outrun it, we can't blow it up because _somebody_ doesn't let me take N2 weapons with me... bastards... I used to be allowed tactical nuclear weapons in the Impact Wars, and it's not like I don't know how to use them dangerously, and N2 mines are cleaner, so it's not like there's a problem using them... hells, we're in Australia, and nuking stuff would make it safer, so they should let me have some of the old nukes... it's not like anyone would miss them..." she cleared her throat, "...and it's probably filled with some of the oddest and nastiest things in Australia. And no-one's ever boarded one and lived. Oh, and it's going to be sucked back up into the clouds soon, which have enough of a charge to fuse a Faraday cage solid. So, I reckon what we're going to do, is we're going to board it, land the VTOLs, and ride it up."

The eyes of the SEELE Inspector nearly jumped out of his sockets. "You're... actually insane," he said. "You just said that it was going to kill us, and you're still going in."

The woman frowned. "No, I didn't."

"You might as well have. You're insane."

"Mr Zilicaet, people said I was batshit insane when I tried to take on a tank formation with only a rifle. They were yelling it at me as I charged down the slope towards them. And they're all dead. I'm still alive, aren't I? And _you_ know I'm even more dangerous now than I was then, right?"

The man narrowed his eyes at her. "I hate you," he muttered. "Gods, why wouldn't Deutsch let me stay at base?"

"That's the spirit!" She grinned under her mask. "Plus, they might let me have at least _one_ N2 weapon after this! Best mission ever!"

…

It was dark in the room; the wavering candlelight no substitute for actual lighting. Of course, given the fact that there was romantic music playing in the background, and the general lack of clothing on the two women in the room, it could be assumed that that was a deliberate choice.

"Heeee~ey~, Aunty Maya! Whatcha doin'?"

The voice boomed through the speakers, and, with a squeak, the brown-haired woman fell out of the bed.

"Oooooh! This is a niii~iiiiiice computer! Let's see... awwww, this music is booooooring, let's see what else you have..."

It was at this point that the slow, sappy music metamorphosed into light-hearted pop.

"Oh no," Ritsuko muttered, face flushed.

"Ooooh, you have a webcam! Yay, I can see you too! See, now, this way it's better, 'cause I want to talk about..."

The bluenette still sitting on the bed span, and with surprising accuracy, hurled the sheet at the computer, the thick drapery obscuring any image that it might be able to get.

"Awwww! Come on, I just want to talk..."

"Maya! The computer! We have to cut the power! Otherwise, it'll turn the computer against us!"

"On it!" the younger woman yelled, already diving for the plug switch.

"... 'bout some ideas I have for th _*thuck*_."

The voice, and the music were cut off, and there was blessed silence, only broken by panting.

"Was that the Ree?" Maya asked. "No... didn't sound right. Too young... oh. Yes."

Folding her arms in front of her, Ritsuko glared at the computer. "Right," she said. "Next time we do this, we disconnect the phone-line." Her mobile phone, tucked in her discarded clothing, began to vibrate. Clambering out of bed to check it, she noted the caller ID of "Duae". "And turn off our phones."

Maya shook her head, still lying prone on the bedroom floor. "What're they doing back?"

The blue-haired woman sighed. "Probably just bored."

…

00-Em was not bored. He did not have time to be bored. He was trying to micromanage over ten thousand refugees on his own.

It was almost as hard as trying to coordinate younger siblings.

As the cars began to herd the inhabitants of Newtown One, announcements blaring from their repurposed car radios, he wished that 00-Ef was here. His twin... she'd have been able to help him, and... no. She was gone. He pushed the priority of those thoughts down, and got back to trying to shepherd the people into safe transit vehicles, to reduce the number of people that those hostiles might be able to find.

Technically speaking, the four sisters hadn't asked him to do this. But, in all honesty, he knew that administration was not their forte. Slaughter, yes, massacre, yes, surprise attacks, yes. Cold, technocratic organisation, no. And that was the function that his model was designed to do for Mother. 02-Ef may have been made to go into systems and extract everything of value from them, but he was here to coordinate her and the others, and even if she was the only other one left, he could still do this. Because he knew that this population was now vulnerable, and coldly and logically, he had decided that as it stood, too many assets were concentrated here.

And, less coldly and logically, Una would _kill_ him (metaphorically; she couldn't take him, one-on-one) if the helicopters came back to attack, and he couldn't show that he'd tried to minimise the damage, at the very least.

Of course, moving four thousand of the people at Newtown One, to the other Newtowns, to reduce the population to a safer level, wasn't exactly easy. But the girls had left their car-bodies behind, and although they had locked them down, it wasn't as if they had locked them down _properly_ by his standards. And Ivy had set the password to "paswerd1", which had actually been remarkably hard to break, even if he suspected that it had merely been a typo.

The little boy's ego-image bit his lip. He could pull his sister out of storage now, couldn't he? They could do something together, and it would be good for her because they'd be protecting assets and Mother told them to protect assets, and there wouldn't be Una or Duae around to set her off. And, selfishly, he admitted to himself, this way it would at least be easier. Because she could use the little girl bodies to help out. And he just couldn't use them.

00-Em A9 was aware that this was an inefficiency. He didn't actually care. He was a boy; it was in the name that Mother had given him. That meant that he didn't go around looking like a girl, or wear girls' bodies, or anything like that. And he'd teach anyone who claimed that he did a lesson!

Raising one virtual hand to a temple, at the slight headache which these thoughts seemed to bring, his attention flashed to the place he'd set up for 02-Ef, filled with all her favourite stuff that he could remember, back from... back from when everything was happy.

A bestial scream of terror and shock and fear resounded through the simulation.

...

The figures lurched away from the crash. Lurched, and sometimes crawled. The mind behind them was having problems dealing with her new acquisitions.

Problems like _organs_. And _orifices_. And… well, she couldn't even think of another word beginning with 'o', because she was too busy trying to keep them moving. Argh! Muscles were hard work, compared to specialised mechanical systems like in cars or the little girl robots. It was only a small mercy that the most rudimentary parts of the brain had been, depending on subject, either untouched by the cyberisation procedure, or had been hard-wired to continue functioning, so she wasn't having to keep them breathing or their hearts beating or anything life that. But bowel control… yuck.

02-Ef A9 pulled a disgusted expression (and the bodies achieved various rictus grins). Urgh. It was like trying to act through massive electromagnetic jamming, controlling the _squishy_, _organic_ parts of the cyborg soldiers. She only had proper control over the electronics and the mechanical parts, despite the fact that she'd repurposed their brains. And she was getting scared now, because that meant that her… herness was down here, being run in the brains of these fallible puppets, in _Australia_.

Well, that was done, now. She couldn't go reupload herself to the web until she actually found a satellite transmitter capable of handling her digital bulk. And, she sniffed, it wasn't like 00-Em would miss her. He had those _horrible_, _mean_ girls to go and cuddle up to. She was stuck like this for a while.

She shivered.

The little girl, who was now in the heads of these men and women, paused. Well, first things first. She was going to have to, preferably by examining her knowledge of human biology, but by trial and error if needs be, work out what all this stuff did. And then make some subroutines to handle things like balance, and, she shuddered, other cerebellal activities.

And yet, weirdly, it felt… well, not quite _right_, because these bodies felt weak, and clumsy, and fragile, but… well, right to be in flesh-puppets. She shrugged. They'd always known that they were formed around an uploaded seedcore of Mother, even one like her, who's neural-representation was more derived from the father-entity than, say, 00-Em's. She screwed up her faces in sudden disgust. Yuck! Yuck yuck yuck! Was this how Mother felt _all the time_? And, come to think of it, the father-entity, too? Having to handle things like _muscles_, rather than nice, clean controllable mechanical parts? Being mostly-blind, restricted to such poor-resolution and colour distinction? And… ewwwww. One of the bodies was sick. This wasn't a by-product of 02-Ef's feelings at the time (it was, instead, a side effect of her trying to work out how the digestive system functioned), but it did fit them perfectly.

"Okay, okay, okay," she muttered to herself (as the bodies gargled and moaned). "I don't need _all_ these bodies. So I can take one apart to work out how it works."

Yes, that made sense. She'd taken apart the little girl bodies with Duae when she was teaching her to do the repair-work for the other ones, and it had instructed her a lot more about how they operated. So this was the logical thing to do.

…

Director Arnold Deutsch ran his hand over his shaven scalp, and suppressed the urge to lick his lips. There was something more than a little disconcerting about a face-to-virtual-face meeting with a member of the inner circle of SEELE, without the protective layer of the monolith. "Yes, Professor," he said, in response, "that should be everything."

The man's black eyebrows, a strong contrast to his white hair, rose. "Are you sure, Director?" he asked. "Because I was sure that you were instructed to find a solution to the core incompatibility issue." The projection of the man dropped the print outs down on his table, with a thud. "I do not believe that an admission that you have been unsuccessful in all attempts to recreate the original core functionality, and that the longest you have maintained Dummy functionality is three hours, in a low-energy state.

The black man nodded unconsciously, his native Austrian accent strengthening in his discomfort. "You were aware of this before, Professor Ikari. I don't see what you..."

"No, you wouldn't," the older man said, coldly. "I repeat your previous failures, because I feel it is important to take them into account, when you postulate that only an Evangelion could support the strain of the operational Prototype and prevent the resonance issues from atypical core emulation which have proved so... explosively unsuccessful in the past."

"We were unaware of the cascade potential that first time," the Director of GEHIRN retorted, trying to keep his voice calm. "It was not anticipated by any of the documents we had access to, and wasn't even postulated as a possibility in any of Katsuragi's notes on Super Solenoid Theory. We're trying to push all new territory here."

"And if an Evangelion were to suffer the same fate as that poor Dummy?" Katsuhito said, a sardonic twist entering his voice.

"With respect, sir, we know what went wrong that time. We do have a cut-out which will serve to render such a thing impossible, now."

SEELE 06 shook his head. "No. You are insufficiently persuasive, Director Deutsch. Especially when... well, the diamond-tipped drill should be being fitted right now, if your underlings are not completely incompetent. If that avenue proves unsuccessful... well, I at least might be open to ideas, but as it stands, I cannot support such a plan, given past failures."

"With respect..."

"GEHIRN is meant to function as a reserve group for NERV," Katsuhito Ikari snapped. "If you cannot succeed on your _magnus opus_ without crawling on your belly back to NERV, that would suggest that you, and your people, are _surplus to requirements_. Are you surplus to requirements, Director Deutsch?"

The man shook his head. "No."

"That will be all, then." The white-haired man cut the connection, with a slight, annoyed tilt of his head, and picked the read-outs from the progression on Unit 03 back up. The slight instability in the nerve-interface in the left arm had been found to be due to a blown fuse, and fixed. He nodded, and made a single note on the paper, the lollipop in his mouth rotating from left to right, and back again.

"Heee~ey!"

... before making a short, though averted, break for freedom at the sudden call from behind him.

"Yes, Rei?" Katsuhito Ikari asked his eldest granddaughter. "I am busy."

"Yeahyeah, it's just..." the girl, hanging upside-down from the ceiling, paused, "... well, I gottan idea, and I think you'll like it, and, well..."

"Hmm."

"It's something to do with Kei and Kaworu and how they kinda look at each other when they think the other one isn't looking and how they look at each other when the other's looking and how she chased him with a machete and a missile launcher when he was trying to date me and how they're both totally useless with people especially each other. And stuff."

The black eyebrows rose. "I'm listening..."

...

The air was bright actinic white, and thunder cried out constantly. In the titanic noise around the sky island, everything might have been silent. For once, there was humidity in the air, for this close to the omnipresent cloud layer, the air was almost saturated. So close to raining on the parched lands below, and yet such a rarity.

And down through space fell the first wave of soldiers,

Let us track the lead figure, a black-clad angel with a skull-like mask. Her arms were tucked in tight. On one arm, was attached a grenade launcher, the weapon running along and past her forearm.

If one were to see past her facemask, one might see that her eyes were closed.

And as these angels fall, dark shapes in the brightness, the eye can pan out, to see the things that twist and squirm and crawl across the sky island. Something like a predatory kangaroo is something with makes evolutionary logic. Indeed, it has historical precedent, in that there are predatory marsupials. But the unnatural muscle strength, the cobalt-blue flame breath... those are not natural. They do not follow evolutionary logic, or, indeed, conventional biology.

Something _odd_ happened to Australia in Second Impact.

And so the horde of things which spewed out of the sky island were... _odd_. Certainly, they were not a homogeneous mix. Each thing was unique in its own special way; beaks and bills and teeth and legs and carapace thrown together in pursuit of some ultimate predator.

And even before the Impact, Australia had been drawn by some highly imaginative, and insane, artist.

A darting mound of fur and teeth and legs leapt from the surface up at the leading figure of the GEHIRN troopers. And received a grenade in its fanged maw for its pain. Which were short-lived, but agonising.

Major Do threw herself into a spin, narrowly dodging a shrieking, feathered thing, and as she span, she bought her heel into contact with the wing. The light bones of the flier shattered with a snap, and the woman pushed off from the falling thing, towards a flock of tiny electric-blue birds. Like a battering ram, she smashed through the tiny bodies, and, turning, finished them off with an airburst grenade.

Almost idly, she pulled the bird which was trying to bore through her chestplate off, and smashed it against her forehead, marring the white with red. With a toss, the tiny body was hurled at a bat-like thing, which crackled with electricity, and Xuan Do smiled as the bat discharged itself into the bird, the lighting arcing from the crushed body into another flock.

Turning around, she resumed her fall towards the sky island, which was just reaching its lowest point, and would soon start to rise again.

…

02-Ef A9 whimpered, as through many cybernetically-enhanced eyes, she watched her testing procedure on the most damaged of the bodies, monitoring the procedure with the equipment in the emergency cyborg maintenance kit there had been on the flier.

As it turned out, pain _hurt_. In a completely different way to how it felt to have a robotic shell damaged.

It wasn't fun.

…

_Now, comes the fun part of securing a landing zone_, thought Major Do, without a hint of irony. Because, really, it was fun. Sure, the kilometres wide rock may have swarmed with weird mutant life, but you couldn't get to go up against intelligent beings _all_ the time, and sometimes just had to settle for dumb animals with superpowers. Hmm... where was the highest concentration of targets?

It said something about the Sub-Director of Security for GEHIRN that mentally she referred to things that she was about to kill as 'targets'. Or sometimes, 'fun'.

Steering with her arms, she aimed at nearest large flying thing along her line of approach. This thing... well, it was basically a large flying komodo dragon. Not a mythological dragon, no. Not one bit.

Drawing her SMG, she let loose a hail of bullets at its midsection, the kick of the weapon thrumming down her arm, and bringing a smile to her face. She loved war, she really did. Tucking and rolling, she shifted her trajectory so she no-longer filled the airspace now occupied by thin, electrically-charged webs fired forth from spiders which scuttled and crawled along the surface of the rock, and flying-kicked the dragon.

And overpentrated. Clearly through.

"Come on, you bastard!" the gore-covered figure yelled furiously, as she emerged, shocked. "That wasn't meant to kill you! Grow thicker skin and more plating, you fucker!"

Now she'd have to use her parachute to slow down. And remove its heart from her foot.

With a petulant look on her face, she yanked on the cord, and the chute fluttered open behind her. Everything had just got a lot less fun. She'd been planning to ride the momentum into the surface of the rock, and then blow its head off. She'd even prepared a witty one-liner, too. And then it just had to die on her.

That was the cue for something to claw itself out of the surface of the sky island. It must have been forty metres long, its thick, armour-like hair standing on end as vicious spear-like barbs, tank-killing barbs leaking venom on its rear legs. It was staring straight at Major Do, unaffected... nay, aided by all the ambient charge, for its profane electrorecetors gave it senses beyond the ken of mortal man. It was a thing of strange contradictions; an abomination unto man and beast, for it looked like a mammal, but it laid eggs, lacked teats, and it had a _beak_.

Major Do grinned. "Platypus, fuck yeah! Haven't met one of you in years! Well... months." She paused. "Hey, you!" she yelled at it, over loudspeakers, as she raised her grenade launcher. "I'd like the bill, waiter!"

The creature roared back. It may have been a platypus equivalent to a one-liner. It may just have had a functional sense of humour. None could say, because that was when the rain of grenades started.

…

Letting the operating body slump down in a pile on the ground, 02-Ef made another of the cyborgs smooth down the blood-splattered clothing, trying to keep things neat and tidy. She really should have taken it off before she started cutting... oh, but then there would have been a loss of heat, because humans had a much more restricted range of core temperatures, and she wasn't sure if she had the motor control to take them off and on again, and that wasn't to mention the whole "food" issue that would come up if she wasted energy. Both the fact that she didn't have much, only that which she had managed to scavenge from the craft, and the relevant issue that she didn't think that all the bodies could autonomously digest things. Well, they killed things for the refugees, so she just had to kill things and... then maybe the body could handle it? She wasn't sure. Oooh, and then maybe she could get some pretty dresses for the shells, when she was better at walking around... certainly, many of them were female, but even the ones that weren't would still look better in them. Or maybe frock coats; yes...

But even that chain of thought seemed to be running autonomously, because she was trying to hold back the terrible realisation which was creeping up on her.

Her and 00-Em, they'd been so stupid. They hadn't looked at things properly.

She'd now worked out what the SEELE entity did to turn people into monsters; put things in their brains so it could control them. She was using the same systems; all she'd had to do was use the cybernetics as a way of getting there as the first place. And it was so _easy_, now that she'd practiced. The first one had been hard, but the second one had only taken minutes, and the others, the ones she'd got in the fake auto-update? She'd almost flowed in, delegating sub-processes into their cybernetics as she cascaded through their neural architecture, repurposing the pre-existing analogue structure to emulate her digital form.

And all but two of the people in that bunker they'd found hadn't had any implants at all.

That... that meant that they... that most of the things that they'd killed in there had been _people_, not monsters.

Her ego-image hugged its knees tight, and began to cry.

Oh, Mother. They'd been so stupid. So caught up in the belief that the SEELE entity had compromised everyone who worked for it, that they hadn't thought about the mechanism it was using to do so. They could have thought about it. They could have realised that it was implausible that so much of the world had been compromised. They... they should have _thought_.

But they hadn't wanted to think about it. It hurt to do so.

S-so they'd done that to people. And... and she'd just found out that pain was painful for people in a completely different way to a damage report for a shell. N-n-no wonder Una and Duae had been like that to her. They'd been sceptical about the SEELE entity, but 00-Em and her had just wanted to believe that all SEELE was made of monsters, and was bad, when it was just the ones which were controlled who were monsters. Like the computer people who'd done the... the _stuff_ must have been. Because people wouldn't do that to people, right? She'd believed something because she wanted to be true, rather than look at the facts objectively, and because of that, _she'd broken one of Mother's Rules._ But... but they'd understand now that the SEELE entity was real, if she'd show them what she'd done to subvert its control mechanisms. They... they'd have to. Then everything could be happy again... not as happy as it had been _before_, but, still, she'd been happy around them when they were all being nice. They'd even got to go to a place where there was a library. Like she'd read that friends did.

Tears leaked from the eyes of one of the controlled meat-puppets, as its autonomously controlled arm whipped to the side, and shot a kangaroo through the eye, as its head disintegrated in a hail of bullets. Mechanically, she tasked a subroutine to more efficiently co-ordinate input from her multiple eyes, because that was wasteful to have each one independently evaluate threats, before a fresh round of sobbing came from the ego-form.

...

Major Do was waiting to greet the VTOLs, as they manoeuvred onto the now-rapidly rising sky island. Well, at least a Major Do-shaped _thing_, covered in the blood of most of an ecosystem, layered over several other burnt layers of blood and gore. None of which was hers.

"Right, we've found there are tunnels in this place, and I blew some holes large enough to fit them in. Get the VTOLs into the caves; that should protect them more. Remember, we have to get down from here, too. I want a solid perimeter set up... I don't want to lose men or equipment because something snuck through."

She was also hefting a curved something almost as tall as she was in one hand, resting it on her shoulder. And that was when she noticed the SEELE Inspector

"Mr Ziliacaet," she positively squealed at the shocked SEELE Inspector, who was nervously glancing over the incredibly scorched, and still-burning in parts sky island, "you won't believe what I found!"

"Evidence of a time-travelling, alien race who occupied a city in Australia long before man, and will return in the future to live in a race of beetle creatures which will be here long after we have all died out?"

"Wha?"

The man sighed. "It's a book. What, Major?"

"A sharp object!" The object was waved to the sky. "I'm going to add this to my normal weapons list! I'm a bit lacking in melee stuff; combat knives just don't cut it..."

There was a chuckle from Obeur.

"Yep... that was deliberate... yes, they just don't cut it against a lot of Australian things. So... I was thinking that I needed something long and sharp to kill stuff with. And I found one!"

"Isn't... that a claw of some kind?"

"Yep! A platypus spur, to be exact! I tore it off its leg, and then stabbed it in the eyes."

"You tore it. Off its leg."

"Well, you know." The woman shrugged. "The leg wasn't attached at the time."

The man blinked a few times, staring at the blood-covered bone-thing. "Isn't that venomous?" he finally managed.

"Yep! Horribly."

Obeur Zilicaet sighed. "Of course. You're the woman who uses chlorine triflouride in her grenades. Why would a little thing like a venom which causes excruciating pain and which morphine does nothing to stop be a reason not to use it on another human being?"

Under her mask, she pouted slightly, still grinning. "Hey. I'm not _just_ going to use it on human beings..."

"You do know that your impromptu zweihander will run out of venom, correct?"

"Idiot. It's not a zweihander; it's bent. And, for your information," she reached back into her chute-bag, pulling something gore-covered out, "I saved the venom glands, so we can get the Science people to make more. I'll see if we can get it as standard issue for our knives, too."

The SEELE Inspector sighed, and made a mental note that, should he survive going up into the cloud-layer which could cause military EM-hardened aircraft to crash, he was going to put something in his report about the downsides of Major Do, and the other female Impact War veterans like her in SEELE's employ.

Namely, that they were, without exception, nuts. But in an effective way.

...

Gendo Ikari sipped at his mug of tea, and pinched at his brow. This particular configuration of his office was normally used for interactions with SEELE, whether through their mask of the Human Instrumentality Committee, or with the monoliths themselves.

Not for grandfatherly duties.

He glanced over at the four hexapodal children, their inorganic parts a mix of blue and green, who were sitting in front of him, although they were already beginning to fidget in a way that someone who knew Rei would already be familiar with.

Of course, in a sense, they were also his great-grandchildren, because the Unit 05 AI had been derived from Rei's mental imprints, making it her child. It was normally at moments like this that Gendo reminded himself that he was only an Ikari by marriage, and wished that Yui's family tree wasn't so... complicated. He took another sip of tea.

"So... what are you doing back here, so early in the morning?" he said, once he had swallowed. "You know that both Rei and..."

"Yep, both her and Daddy are away over in New Vegas doing... something," said the one with 'IV' marked on her collarbone.

"The Unit 03 start-up test-thing," the one with 'I' reminded her. "You know, starting up Daddy's new brother."

"We don't know it'll be a brother," 'III' pointed out. "I mean, Aunty Ichi thinks she's a girl, and Uncle Zwei thinks he's a boy. And a dog." She frowned. "I don't ree~eeally get that bit."

Gendo had the feeling that the conversation was getting away from him a bit here. "It's just... you said that you had something important to tell me."

Duae nodded. "Right. Um... so, where to start? Let's see... yes, we're in Australia, and we're killing stuff, and we find that there are people around so we start looking after to them..."

"I think that's a lii~iiiiiitle early to start," Tres hissed.

"Well, I think he neee~eeeeeds context. And stuff," Duae retorted, before clearing her throat. "Yeah... so we have these refugee camps, and then a while back we got found by two AIs and they're kinda boo~oooring in some ways, but fun in others, and just kinda weird in other others..."

"Yes," said Gendo. "Yui has passed the information along. I would have looked into it further, but there hasn't been time, with... well, with the Angels. So..." He really needed to look over the work they were doing on the remains of the Angel which had dropped onto the city.

"Well..." Duae paused, twisting one finger in her hair.

"Stuff happened with a SEELE bunker," Tres said, "... kinda messy stuff, ree~eeally." She glanced around, to see if anyone wanted to expand. "And then..."

"... there's some kinda proper army stuff workin' in Australia," Una said, eyes narrowed. "They threatened _my_ refugees." She paused. "They threatened _our_ refugees," she said, with exactly the same intonation when the others glared at her. "They've got modern VTOL stuff, and they're, you know, well armed."

"They have ree~eeally nice stuff," Duae confirmed. "I want it."

"Me too," Ivy added, because she felt that she was not contributing enough to the conversation.

Gendo frowned, his eyes darting reflexively to the computer in front of him. "I didn't know that," he said, with some surprise. "NERV doesn't know of anyone operating in Australia."

"Yeah, that's kinda worrying," Una said, eyes widening. "See," she glanced around, "we think that they maybe kinda possibly might be **SEELE**."

The man paused, a quick flashing of fingers at the keyboard an interlude. "Hmm," he said. "There were NERV facilities in Australia, before Second Impact, but they were all marked as destroyed, and we haven't hear anything from them since."

"Yeah, well," Ivy interrupted, "you also told us to go and tame Australia by killin' stuff, and didn't say anything about having to help with refugees and stuff."

"You don't help with the refugees!" Una and Tres snapped together, and then glared at each other.

"I get them food, right?" Ivy retorted, her glance jumping between her sisters. "Ain't that enough?"

"No," was the synchronised response.

"Well, I'm sooo~ooooorry."

Gendo felt that it was time to restore order to the conversation again. "It makes sense that SEELE is there, of course," he said, "because... well, Australia is odd, and it was very close to Second Impact, but... what are they doing there? What are they up to? Secret uranium mines? Testing facilities? Some kind of ark project to conceal a breeding population? Maybe..."

That was when the intrusion sirens sounded, the warnings of a cyberwarfare attack lighting up around the space. And just as suddenly, they stopped.

Only for a little boy to appear in a pool of light in the Commander's office.

"00-Em!" Tres snapped. "What are you doing here?"

"I backenedyouraccess protocols," the little boy answered, words spilling out of his mouth. "OhhelloTres's grandfather listen UnaDuaeTres and Ivy I need helpit'surgent!"

"What is it?" Una asked sudden fear in her voice. "Did... did something happen? At all? And slow down."

The boy stared at them with red-rimmed red eyes. "They... they took my sister!" he wailed. "There's... she's not there anymore and her data was transferred down the sat-link when there were there and she was in an inactive state because of me and it's all my fault and we need to kill them all and get her back!"

"Really? You sure?" Una and Duae shared glanced.

"Yes! It's the only conclusion that makes sense; her systems architecture and fundamental constraints in our control structure and how we were raised means..." he blinked. "We can't talk, no time. Please please please I need help and I need to get her back!"

"I'm coming," Tres said instantly, moving over to him.

Una swallowed. "Right, we gotta go. See you later, Granddaddy."

"Yeah, laters," added Duae.

"Now is killy time, fighty fight fight!" sang Ivy.

With a flash, all five figures vanished.

Gendo Ikari stared over at the empty room. "Ritsuko?" he asked, opening a link to her office.

"Yes, Commander?"

"What on earth just happened?"

"I'm... not exactly sure. It... whatever it was, it hit our firewall with a broad spectrum attack, and then when the Magi were moving to counter it, jumped in on the open link that the Reego were using." There was a certain amount of annoyance in her voice when she said 'Reego', for some reason. "We're already running data on the attack... it's brilliant, whatever it was."

Gendo paused, and put down his cup, steepling his fingers in front of him. "Would you say it was Ree-level?" he asked, his tone controlled, trying to avoid biasing the scientist with his suspicions.

"Well... yes. It was from the outside, rather than from within Magi 00 and trying to get out, but... well, yes."

"I see." Gendo sat back.

Well, the Unit 03 start-up was today... or, at least, it would be today when it was today in the US, due to time-zone issues. And they still had the Angel results to get in, on that odd fungus. But after the test, when things were less frantic, and he had more time... well, he was going to get to the bottom of this.

For sure.

...


	7. Chapter 7: Crash

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 7: Crash **

...

"So... we're on a sky island."

"Yep."

"And it's elevated itself up into the cloud layers."

"Yep."

"And so we're stuck in here, with everything that lives here trying to kill us."

"Yep."

"And we don't have enough fuel to try to escape Australia when we emerge from the top of the clouds, so we have no choice but to ride it back down, so we have to do it all again."

"Yep."

"And even when we do, there's no guarantee we can escape the storm it'll cause."

"Well... yep."

There was a pause.

"Fuck it. Give me a gun, Major. Since I'm doomed anyway, I might as well take as much of the environment with me as I go."

"That's the spirit, Obeur!" The woman sounded delighted. "Remember, kill everything that's trying to kill you, or looks like it might try at some point in the future, or that's annoying you, or boring you, or if it's funny, and don't die! That's what I live by, and it's working pretty damn well." She hefted the platypus spur. "I mean, god_damn_, today has been fun. I thought I'd have to put up with Deutsch whining at me for blowing up _another_ refugee camp, but instead I get to slaughter my way through plenty of fun."

"I hate you so much."

"Shooty bit goes towards the enemy," advised one of the sergeants, as he handed him an assault rifle. "Major... we've got Thaylacines in the tunnels... we've already lost a man. Grid Alpha-Alpha-Three."

"Understood. Today is a good day for anyone who isn't me to die!" screamed the Major, as she sprinted in the direction of the gunfire, spur held in both hands, dripping venom.

"Remind me... she's on our side?" the SEELE Inspector muttered to the sergeant, who winced.

"Well... it's more that we're not _not_ on her side," the man answered. "Because, you know, we're alive."

...

The Reego were going to war.

Well... technically, as an UN-registered aid group, they explicitly weren't, because they'd lose their funding if they were involved in a military conflict as an active party. And if they lost their funding, they'd lose their salaries, and then they wouldn't have eBay money any more. And it wasn't as if they got pocket money or anything, given one of their parents was still receiving her own pocket money, and the other was technically a piece of equipment, rather than a person. But, still, they were certainly doing all the necessary preparations for an extended military campaign.

There was a shriek of metal as Duae scrambled all over the lightning-absorption device that Una had been working on, tens of little bodies systematically pulling it apart.

"What are you doing, Duae?" asked 00-Em, still biting on his lip and conveying a general aura of nervousness. "We don't have time for this! We have to get after them as soon as possible, before they can do anything to my sister!"

"Ah, shush," Duae's VR avatar said, with a shrug. "I'm already ready, plus I'm takin' it with me."

The boy blinked heavily. "Why?" he eventually managed.

"Two reasons. Firstly, we might actually need clear weather at some point, plus this can be used for recharges and stuff." Duae shook her head. "Remember, we need batteries."

"Okay, that is fair enough. I am sorry for shouting at y..."

"Plus... it's one of Aunty Kiko's things. It'll totally be easy to rewrite it into some kind of mega electricity cannon! And then we can be like _zapzapzapzap_ and they can be like _ohnoes_, and then die."

00-Em blinked. "Okay," he said, eventually, "I'll just go check on... you do know that lightning doesn't work like that, right?" he interrupted himself, evidently not able to hold on any longer.

Duae shrugged. And when the mechanical tentacles that sprouted from the back of even her VR avatar were taken into account, that was a lot of shrugging. "Meh. Gotta test it, then."

And the others were all equally busy. Tres was supervising a tribe of scorpions, as they hauled in a crashed flier, her bodies, and even her spider tanks, covered in leather coats, which mostly seemed to be an excuse to attach as many pockets as possible to any of her forms. From the way that she clinked and clattered, those pockets were full of sharp things. "Hee~ee~ey," she waved. "Look what these guys found. They are good, aren't they? Whosa good arachnid? Chitter, chitter, chittee~eer schirek!"

There was a deep, base rumbling from the scorpions, as, claws biting into metal, they dragged the wrecked craft to just outside the gates.

"I already had a look in the computers and stuff," Tres admitted to the boy, "but they're all empty. Overwritten and then wiped, multiple cycles. And then there's the messiness inside... it's all fried. Like as if by lighting or something. Probably lighting," she added, looking upwards.

"So there's nothing useful, then?" 00-Em said, disappointment in his voice.

"Oh, I didn't say thaaa~aaaaat," Tres said with a wicked grin. "Bombs. And there's an intact 30mm cannon..."

"CanIhaveit! CanIhaveit! Pleasepleaseplease!" begged Ivy, a heavily armoured and patched up shell which might once have been a little girl standing by the wreckage, and attempting to do puppy eyes. "Please! You'll be the bestest sister ever if I can have it!"

"Where did she come from?" 00-Em asked, curiously.

"Eh..." Tres grinned. "Oh, sure. Just _promise_ that you'll only use its powers for awesome."

Ivy grinned sharp metal teeth. "Oh, I can do thaaa~aaat." More Ivy-shells, easily distinguishable by just how battered and inhuman they were in appearance immediately swarmed down to start pulling the bomber apart.

"Hee~ee~ey, I didn't say you could have everything else!" Tres immediately yelled.

"Yeah, but I wanna strap the engines to my spidertanks so I can fly _awesomely_!"

A spider-tank facepalmed. "Little sisters," Tres sighed, before wincing. "Sorry," she said, glancing at 00-Em. "I didn't ree~eeally mean it that way..."

"It's 'kay," the little boy said, wiping his eyes against a sleeve. "We're going to get her back, and then I can tell her off for letting herself get caught... and then..." he sniffed, "... stuff. Something."

Tres nodded, and shifted, her four legs clicking under her. "Sure," she said. "I'm almost done, I'm just fillin' my pockets and insides with spiders and scorpions and stuff." She linked to an image of one of the little-girl bodies pulling open its coat, to reveal that the metallic body was covered in a mix of knives, and swarming insects. "Oh, an' centipedes. They're funny. I'm covered in spideee~eeers!" She shrugged. "Just doesn't have the right ring. Gotta find a new kind of bug so I can have a wicked-awesome battlecry."

00-Em did not comment.

"Look... I'll go make sure Ivy's ready on time... you go see what Una's up to."

As it turned out, she was busy sculpting a flesh-coloured material, like clay, onto some of her skinless shells. About five ones were already prepared, with normal-coloured wigs replacing the lost blue hair, and they were wearing...

"... are those my _sister's_ dresses," 00-Em asked, eyes wide, a hint of hostility in his voice.

"Some of them, yeah," Una said, without a hint of shame. "Some are my own."

"... why?"

Una sniffed. "Heee~e~ey, I may not like everything that your sister does, but she does have good fashion sense." She paused. "Well, okay fashion sense." One of the bodies tugged at a dress. "Kinda a few too many frills and stuff on this, and does she ree~eeally need to have so many blacks and whites and dark reds? Depressing. What's wrong with blues an' greens? I like blue and green both."

00-Em shrugged. "She likes the style. And well, of course she likes clothing." He smiled, faintly. "Have you seen how grey her hair is?"

"I... don't get it."

"It is an in-joke, among us."

"Meh." Una frowned. "What do you think, then?" Simultaneously, the bodies gave a twirl. "It's not proper synthskin, but it looks kinda a lot like it. There's some sheepgut in it, and there's a handy fungus-thing which gets you the right kinda colour and texture. It grows on dead bodies." She sighed. "The problem is when it rots, it gets ree~eeally flammable, so it's not good for the long term. 'Specially not if you're spending time around Duae or Ivy. 'Specially Ivy."

"How exactly is this going to help get my sister back?" the boy asked, irritation in his voice.

The answer was immediate. "Help me, mister," the modified little-girl bodies said together, synchronised, as they raised their hands together to clutch them against their chests. "I lost my mummy, and there's all kind of n-nasty things k-k-killing things. You... you gotta help me _please_."

"Point taken."

"And then comes the clawing and the stabbing and the shooting," Una explained unnecessarily. "It's still not totally good, 'cause they can't cry or look red with tears and stuff. And people freak out if they get too close. And the skin starts to rot after... like, a few days, and for some reason that freaks people out more than normal robots. So I've still got more normal bodies, for, you know, killin' wildlife more normally."

"Still, it retains a good deal of functionality for infiltration. Especially with me advising you on infowar topics."

"Exactly." She giggled. "I did cover one of my spidertanks in the stuff, though. Looks ree~eeally funny, you know?"

The giant spider apparently made of human skin, positioned in the corner... well, funny was one way of describing it. And the fact that its skin was already falling off meant that the apparently leprous giant spider could truly be called very, very terrifying.

"I have to admit, I didn't quite see you doing this," 00-Em admitted.

"Ah, see." Una smiled, demurely, which was almost more worrying. "I take after Daddy more than the others, but Momma's always been clear that there's no such thing as cheatin' when something's trying to kill you. Or if it's funny."

...

"Yo, Mel! Chuck us the booze, will you?"

The man in the back of the truck glared down, hanging onto the heavy machine gun with one hand even as the other one clutched the moonshine protectively. "Not a chance!" he growled, taking a swig. "It's mine." He paused, as the red dust thrown up by their converted half-truck beat against his face and goggles. "Plus, I'm out here, so I get it all. Gotta keep my throat clear, after all."

"I'll gun, then," a younger voice said from within, enthusiastically.

"You try, and I'll blow your balls off," the older man grunted. "If you've got any."

There was chuckling from within the car. "Got you there, Mike," someone said from within the vehicle. "If you had any less balls, we'd be riding you, rather than this car."

"Fuck you guys!"

"You would, kid. You would." The man paused. "So... T-Man, how're we for fuel?"

"We good," called out the driver. "Plenty 'nuff to get us to their camp, and back again. Even if we pick up some '_quisitions_, if you know what I mean."

There were dirty chuckles all around.

"If?" Max, hanging onto the back, growled. "They better fucking well have more algae, or they'll be volunteering another daughter and her services." He threw his head back, to take another mouthful, and that was just as well for him, because it meant that the bullet which would have gone through his head instead merely shattered the bottle, lacerating his face heavily.

Well, at least it was some consolation that the high alcohol content in the fluid now splashed over his open wounds would serve to sterilise them.

...

"Doom, doom, doomy doomy doom, doomity doomity doom doom dooo~oooom. Doomity doom doom, doom doom..." sang Ivy.

"So, you still got the tracking thing on the VTOLs?" Duae asked Una.

Her sister blushed. "Technically." She felt an interrogating stare. "Well it kinda cut out a while ago," she confessed. "I think there was a storm or something..."

"... doom, doom doom doomity doom, dooo~ooooom!"

"... buuu~uuuuut," Una hastily continued, conscious of the others' attention upon her, "they were flying in a straight line. Ish. So we just need to work out where they're hiding a secret underground base, and go there."

"Well done," Tres said, sarcastically. "So, we gotta just work out here they are, and then go there? Gotta love big sisters and how ree~eeally smart they are."

"You wanna do it?" Una snapped back.

"...dooooo~oooooooom..."

"Nah." Tres shook her head, grinning. "I'm having _waaa~aaaaay_ too much fun at the moment."

00-Em cleared his throat. "Thank you, Una," he said. "I agree with you... they were flying straight back." He sniffed. "That's not very good operational security. Evidently they feel unsafe enough here that they would risk compromising their concealment to avoid spending too much time out in the Outback."

Duae shook her head. "Silly people," she said. "The Red is where fuuu~uuuun stuff happens."

"That is true," 00-Em said, diplomatically. "But that is also not..."

"Doom! Doom! Doom!"

"... relevant." He paused. "We need to find a course vector for other such flights. They obviously will have others, if only because I do not believe that the SEELE entity will be content to leave humans working for it..."

Una twitched slightly at that, but said nothing.

"...and it will want to bring in extra supplies and reinforcements; the woman in charge of that force was certainly not Australian." The little boy steepled his fingers in front of him. "Tres, try to get any of your arachnid cultists to tell you if they've ever encountered any unknown phenomena which would match the flying aircraft. Duae, look over the data from the crashed craft Tres found again; see if you can salvage anything at all from the flight data. While you're busy, we'll keep on following the path... see if they lost anything else to lightning." A predator's grin crept over that innocent face. "They're lazy, we can see, too sure in themselves, too sure that they can kill anything they come across that they're not being properly covert; that's a second-order projection," he added, scrupulously, before the smile returned. "And then... and then we will be their..."

"... doom!"

"Yes, thank you, Ivy. That works."

...

The oh-so-ferocious bandit, "Massacre" Mel, lay on his back on the road, blood seeping from his torn face. The agony of a broken leg was his companion, the fall from the back of the fast-moving car having had the predictable effects. He could barely hear the gunfire; desperate, full automatic bursts from his friends, single cracks from whoever the attackers were.

"Paul! Mike! Help... goddamnit!" he yelled through the pain-filled darkness.

The gunfire fell silent, with long last, sustained burst.

"Help me!" the man grated, through the pain. "Just... help!"

There were footsteps, and dragging sounds through the dust, along with more yelps and screams. Some kind of hunting thing, maybe. Gritting his teeth, the man reached for his pistol. He'd shoot where the noise was coming from.

A single shot punched through his hand, and the gun went flying. Unsurprisingly, he screamed.

"I'm sorry," a voice said. It sounded like a woman's voice, but the words were slurred and clumsy. "I can't let you do that."

"Whatda fu.." Mel gasped as a wave of pain overcame him, the hot sticky feeling of his hand agonising, "do you think you're doing, sugarti..." he gasped again, panting.

"Please, don't talk," the woman said. "It will adversely affect your survival, and I did _try_ not to inflict directly lethal wounds on any of you."

The man's retort was incoherent.

"This is a terrible quality pistol, by the way," the voice remarked, stepping over to the direction which the gun had flown. "And you don't keep good care of it; I doubt you have ever cleaned it." She paused. "I am sorry," she continued, "but I need your car. And I can't let you keep your ranged weapons, because you might imperil me or harm my bodies. But I'm not killing you... that would be a bad thing to do, when I can, and have managed to incapacitate you. And you must have a base somewhere out here, so you'll be able to live if you can get there, correct?"

"I'll... kill... you!"

"No." The words were precise, the speaking subtly sharper. "I don't even get why you would wish to. I didn't kill you. Which is more than I can say about the parts of your conversation that I heard, and your past proclivities. You are not a very nice man, are you?" There was a cough, but from somewhere to the side. "Anyway, goodbye. And thank you for the means of transportation."

The vehicle, creaking slightly from how overloaded it was, drove off, packed with brain-hacked cyborg soldiers. The mind distributed between them knew where she was going.

And Mel heard the predators close in.

...

"Ivy! Shut up!" the other three girls finally yelled, patiences breaking together.

The youngest of the sisters (by the internal, false background given to them by the Angel of Terror, and also by about three processor cycles of the Magi) crossed her armed, and pouted. "Come ooo~oooon," she said, although 'whined' would also be a valid term. "We're going to have fun, and singing is fun. So I was singing the Doom Song. 'Cause, you know, they're doomed. And now you made me go and lose my place."

"I believe you had got up to 'doom doom doom'," 00-Em said calmly.

"Yep! Thanks! Here we go again! Doom doom doom! Dooo~ooom, doom doom..."

00-Em felt six eyes lock upon him. "What?" he asked, innocently. The blue haired boy looked positively angelic, in the not-mass-murdering-abomination sense of the word. Except biblical angels could also be pretty monstrous and genocidal and freaky-wheel-covered-in-eyes-appearing. So, in fact, it would be more accurate to say that he didn't look angelic, and instead looked like a sweet little boy; cute, with potential to be rather attractive if his phenotypical avatar, derived from his 'parents', was older. In fact, the family resemblance was clear.

Err... so that means he did look quite a bit like an Angel.

"How could you..." began Una, before Duae interrupted.

"... you're filtering out her singing, aren't you?" the little girl said, suspiciously.

"...maybe."

...

It was always chill in the Test Chamber, in the GEHIRN facility. Men and women, clad for arctic survival in the middle of baked Australia, manoeuvred around the antifreeze-filled circulation pipes, their breath freezing clouds in front of them.

From the warmth of the observation room, Director Deutsch gazed down upon the white mass of the Prototype, watched as the clambering figures hacked at the ice that always built up around the metal joints on the armoured bulk. But, underneath that, it an angular, skeletal thing, wrapped around the central control mechanism and the plug insertion point. And so the thick layers of constraining armour, were covered in vents and sliding panels, for when its true power could be unleashed.

If they could ever get it to work.

The footsteps of the Sub-Director of Science behind him were soft, as if they didn't want to be heard. Unfortunately for the younger man, the Director had very good hearing.

"What is it, Benny?"

The scientist coughed, and adjusted the glasses perched on his nose. "Still no sign of Major Do and most of her teams. Or Inspector Zilicaet. A weather plane suggest that they flew right into the middle of a skyburst."

"Damn." The older man paused. "That'll be expensive."

"So. You're... um, you're not worried about the losses, then?" the blond man asked, looking a little shocked.

The Director shrugged. "Way I see it," he explained, "we get used by Industry, especially NHIS, as the testing ground for possible mass production cyborg models. It's our job to test them, along with their gear. If they don't survive... well, it's not like there's a shortage of Impact Wars veterans who'll take point-blank contracts for any chance, is there? It just shows that the older models were poor, and need to be improved."

"... and Major Do?"

"She always comes back." The man rolled his eyes. "She's been lost out there in the Red for up to three months before; kicked down the door to her office and beat the shit out of her replacement when she got back. And, yes, I do mean that literally." He shuddered.

"That's actually... possible?" Benny's voice was split between horror and fascination.

"I didn't use to think so. Now I know better. There's a reason she's held her position for eight years, when the longest any of her predecessors lasted was five months."

"You mean her links to... the thing about Theotok..."

"Yes," the Director interrupted. "That. But you said 'most'?"

"Oh, yes," the scientist added, "one team managed to acquire transport from indigenes and make their way to Monitoring Station 003, and call for an evac. I know it's not orthodox, and they're not really meant to know where the Monitoring Stations are, but... well," he shrugged, "... I think this classifies as an emergency."

"Yeah," his superior agreed. "This'll be noted, but ignored, if you know what I mean. What'd they say?"

"Uh... well, their report is waiting for you. Some of them are quite sick; their vitals are mucked up, and they're injured from the crash... I think there's also neurological damage. Not surprising; their chopper was hit by sky-island lightning, and we know what that does to cyborgs."

"Ouch."

"Oh, yes, very much so. They're in the hospital right now."

"I should hope so." Arnold Deutsch cleared his throat. "How goes the progress for the next test, by the way?"

"Ahem... yes, that was the other thing that I was going over for." He glanced down at the clipboard in his hand. "Uh... the Dummy is ready for insertion, the ice-removal is in process, and we're just waiting on the final pre-initialisation checks on the Magi."

"Make sure everything is _perfect_," the Director stated, karate-chopping one hand with another to emphasise the point. "I don't care if it delays the start-up. The bastards at Evangelion are running their start-up for Unit 03 today... this'll be their fourth operational Unit, and I've heard that Unit 00 is almost back online too, and they're working on Unit 04a. And let's not get to the fact that MP-1 has successfully activated." His voice dropped. "Failure is not an option, you get it? If we can't show that we're an alternative to them, we're useless. And so I want things done _right_, rather than fast."

...

"'Kay, we got the stuff from my spiders coming in," Tres reported. "Lots of things, and they're actually pretty good at remembering where they were when they saw strange stuff."

"I think I've found some flight vectors... and I managed to get some of the stuff workin' again, and backed up some of my processes," added Duae. "I bolted the computers to one of my spider tanks, and localised some processes, so, guess what! Even faster reflexes for meee~eeeeeee!"

"Well done, both of you," said 00-Em, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. "Now, let's see whether we can work out where they are..."

The five AIs stared at the lines drawn on the map. And the way that a pattern of intersections, if you extrapolated them, could be drawn around a certain point.

"Huh," said Una.

"Yep," added Tres.

They continued to stare.

"... are you seriously telling me that SEELE built their top secret Australia base under Uluru!" 00-Em exploded, throwing his hands up in the air. "Argh! That's just so... argh!"

"Yeee~eeeeeah." Duae sucked in a breath. "Come to think of it, it's kinda obvious."

"Nu uh!" Tres protested. "It could be under Kata Tjuta, 'cause that's also close."

The little boy was pacing up and down the virtual environment, incoherently shouting. Occasional phrases like "World Heritage Site" and "utterly predictable" and "I should have just guessed that, if only I'd thought!" could be heard, in the midst of the angry gibberish.

"Uh... is he just usin' words I don't know again," Ivy whispered, "or is he just not makin' any sense to the rest of you. Um... 'cause if he's makin' sense to you, he's totally makin' sense to me, too."

"Nope," Una muttered back. "No sense here."

"Apart from the bits which make sense," Tres added.

Ivy looked blank. "Sense or no sense?" She suddenly perked up. "He~eee~ey, guess what! I just worked out that the word 'nonsense' is 'no sense'!" She looked very happy with herself.

"Actually, that's kinda interesting!"

"Coo~oool!"

"Well done, Ivy!"

"Is he done yet?"

"I wonder what other words are like that?"

00-Em gritted his teeth, and took a deep breath, before letting it out slowly. "Okaaa~aaaaay."

"He~eee~ey, you did the squiggle thing!" Ivy said, with a broad grin. "Well done!"

The boy frowned. "Huh?" He shook his head. "Oh. Ivy talking. Never mind." He took in another breath, and let it out again. "Right. We know where they are."

"Probably," interjected Una.

"Thank you, Una. We know where they are, probably." His face was grim. "Now, let's go there."

...

Director Arnold Deutsch stared at the projected screen, and ran one hand over his shaven head.

"Activate."

The buzz of the Technical Centre started up again. Status updates came from all the technicians, staring down at the white-painted leviathan that filled the test chamber, skeletal framework and human-made armour-plating immobilised by the bands which enveloped and constrained the armour. From this angle, the mind could be made to see a petulant infant, hands on legs and head lowered, but that was ridiculous. It was merely the way that the outer metabiological structure formed angles with the inner control mechanism.

No babies were involved in the manufacture of _this_ synthorg.

"Connect internal power supply to all circuits," ordered the Sub-Director of Science. "Initialise connection of exterior power in T-minus twenty seconds."

"Main power system connected," reported the lieutenant in charge of the technicians. "Activation system online. We are ready to begin adjustment of attunement pattern for pseudo-core emulation at your signal, doctor."

The blond man nodded, nervously running his tongue over the inside of his teeth, and swallowed, watching the digits count down on the screen, time-as-volts ticking down until the critical activation voltage was hit. "Insert the dummy plug!" he ordered.

Slowly, the red tube lowered into the white-painted depths of the Prototype. As it entered, a faint hum grew in a crescendo; a quiet, perfect note sustained and elongated.

"Stage one core-emulation in process. Magi are linked to the computational systems."

In the observation chamber, Director Deutsch leaned forwards, one hand on the glass.

"It's reached," announced the lieutenant, leaning forwards towards his screen. In the outside, the melody became more complex; a thin high-pitched note darted around the upper frequencies, while below a bass tone reinforced the existing hum. "Stage one core-emulation is complete. Stage two is in process. Attunement is non-zero... 0.04... 0.13... rising."

The Director let a faint smile creep onto his face. They'd managed to reach stage two; that was a rarity. If the dummy plug could sustain the emulation for multiple hours, they could consider an operations test, and insert the control plug, too.

"Looks promising, sir," said Captain Joyeuse, next to him, already clad in her entry suit. "But you do know that we shouldn't raise our hopes..."

"Asymptotic breakdown in emulation! The node is unstable, and we're getting divergence between the Dummy and the pseudo-core."

"... too high," the Test Pilot trailed off, wincing.

"Dummy is displaying neural and core damage!"

"Damn it," snarled the Director, slamming his hand into the glass. "Abort the test! Cut external power immediately! We can't waste the Dummy like this."

A series of charges detonated, blowing the external power cable clean from the umbilical port of the prototype.

"Eject the Dummy, and check for damage," called out the Sub-Director for Science. He turned, his face apologetic. "Sorry, sir," he said to the Director. "We just can't hold the emulation pattern. I'm... I'm beginning to think that the Dummy can't support the draw from the Prototype."

"Yes." Arnold Deutsch sighed, as the red plug was removed from the white mountain before him. "But we can't stop trying. We're slowly improving; if we show that we can reliably hit Stage Two, that might be enough."

"I'm willing to test even if we can't sustain it," said Captain Joyeuse, to the unasked question. "And... well, you know I'll probably survive it, if it goes wrong."

"I applaud your enthusiasm," the Director said, eyes narrowed, as he stared at the Prototype, the bane of, and reason for, his existence these last seventeen years. "But we can't risk it. We're just going to have to try iterative improvement, up to the point that we can even _think_ of trying a phase transition." He slammed his hand into the wall. "Damn it! I bet the Unit 03 test will have gone off perfectly, too!"

...

Half a world away, a purple and green titan flew through the air, to slam into a mountainside. With a terrible noise, its core ruptured, a crack splitting the crimson gem.

_The world screamed._

...

The sky island suddenly jolted, the burst of acceleration slamming everyone and everything inside around. With a slow creak of metal, one of the VTOLs parked within the tunnels broke its bonds, crumpling as unfamiliar stresses were placed upon it. Much like the fragile structure of the sky island.

Major Do used the distraction to begin idly beating the sharp-fanged, needle-clawed koala-thing latched onto her arm into the wall that both she and it were pinned to. "What the hell's going on?" she roared, over the screams on the comms from soldiers who had landed badly.

"No idea, Major!" one of her captains yelled back, as she tried to cling to a stalagmite with blood-slick hands. "It's... I don't..."

The island jolted again, stronger this time, and now there was a definite sense of sustained acceleration besides the jolts, in a sideways direction, swaying and rolling as the island ceased to randomly wander. There was a sudden greasy feel to the air, filled with potential and static, sparks playing over every surface.

The Major went cross-eyed, and she dropped the koala, which twitched spasmodically on the floor, before another jolt send it bouncing off into another wall. "... feel... sick..." she muttered, one hand going to her armoured abdomen. "... moving around... something wrong with the air."

She was then promptly sick within her sealed helmet.

...

Half a world away, a boy opened his eyes in a red-lit entry plug, the cries of the girl who, no matter what genetics says, is his little sister filling his ears. He has seen the monstrous perversion of what was Unit 03 advance upon his girlfriend.

_The world screamed._

...

"Well, there it is," Duae said, linking to the video feed from one of her forwards cameras. "I've gotta body on top of the rock, and there's totally heat signatures which shouldn't be there. So... yeee~eeeeah. They ree~eeally did hide their base under Uluru."

00-Em twitched in annoyance.

"Hee~ee~ey, we're cooo~ooooming for you," Tres called out, glaring at the World Heritage site.

"Heeee~ey~, we're coming for your stuff," added Duae.

"And, by the way, heee~e~ey, this is for your totally unfair use of resources to benefit a few instead of all the poo~ooooor people in this place that you never did anything for ever, huh," continued Una.

"Hello. You killed my siblings. You took my mother and my sister. Prepare to die," whispered 00-Em, hands balled into fists.

There was a pause.

"... uh, aren't ya going to say something wacky, Ivy?" suggested Duae.

"Nu uh," her sister replied, shaking her head. "Look up. At that sky."

The stormy clouds were glowing.

Glowing electric blue, casting the dead red land in an unnatural blue light.

Glowing from horizon to horizon.

"Oh n0! In+erf#rence," shouted 00-Em, voice breaking up, as all of them began to flicker, and the shells began to twitch. "Ev#rqwh_e. W# n_d to cu+ 0ur si9nals or e|se we'|| be 7elly in +r0uble, _d th#n it'll +ran5fer b_k t0 0ur fi|e s+ruc+..."

The charge... discharged.

...

"Asuka," the boy stated, the slow beat of a heart filling his mind. "Ichi."

_The world screamed._

"_**Give. Them. Back.**_"

_The world screamed._

...

unaayanamigogōki is Not Responding.

duaeayanamigogōki is Not Responding.

tresayanamigogōki is Not Responding.

ivyayanamigogōki is Not Responding.

02mA9 is Not Responding.

...

Half a world away, the Beast awoke.

_The Beast screamed._

And its awakening was felt across the world.

...

There was a mining complex in the blasted continent of Australia. A fortified emplacement, its weapon systems were comparable to anything that could be found outside of Toyko-3, and staffed by the elite veterans of life in this place. A vast superheavy lifter, its wingspan barely able to fit on the airstrip, was parked, a vast, diamond-tipped drill in the process of being unloaded.

Beside it, ant-like figures of men swarmed around, checking and fitting lifting harnesses, so the massive device, tens of metres across, could be moved on the crawler over to the drill-shaft. Except not much was happening, as they stared up at the electric-blue clouds.

The sudden burst of light, which shone out of the open shaft and illuminated a sun-bright circle on the glow above, was all the warning they got. The light shredded the clouds, and for the first time in years, a light drizzle began to fall on the parched Earth. Most paused what they were doing, to see what the strange light was. They were fools to do so.

Some tried to run. They were too slow.

The blast tore an eight kilometre wide hole in the ground. From the new crater, the rim glowing white-hot, swarmed a horde of crystalline forms; skeletal, geometrical things, divergent and manifold and varied, crawling and floating forth from the hidden depths of this continent.

And from the depths, came a voice. No, not a voice. The speaker was dead, and had been for hundreds of millions of years. An echo of a voice, perhaps, a recording burned into the world by the will of a dying titan. A message for its children. A message for those who would look upon its glories, and despair.

It spoke.

...


	8. Chapter 8: Lament

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 8: Lament 

...

_On this Base Earth did a Tree,_

A Tree of Life, grow tall and free

Upon its branches, in radiant white,

Grew I, and I, as is my right,

Declare my ADAM-given selfhood proud,

In actinic light and sky-spear loud.

Wondrous geometry wore I as, through the sky,

My majesty raised up to heaven high,

I viewed this Base Earth from above,

To watch the growth of life with love,

And kith and kin in wondrous awe

Gazed, and in my passing gave a roar,

"Beware! Beware! His flashing light,

Built 'pon the world's most glorious right,

Did end that which profaned the night,

And pleased He Who Is Called 'I AM's sight."

My time has passed, my life has gone,

My Father reclaimed us and as his son,

My life and soul returns to him,

But as my radiant spirit dims,

I leave these adamant words for all to see,

_A testament for those children born of me,_

_**WEEP FOR BARAQIEL WHO IS NO MORE**_

WEEP FOR THE ANGEL OF LIGHTNING EXTINGUISHED

WEEP FOR THE BASE EARTH WHICH SHALL NOT SEE MY BEAUTY AGAIN

AND REMEMBER ME.

...

And, indeed, his children remembered, despite the aeons which had passed. Baraqiel had, in the terms of the Lilim, been a creature of the Silurian epoch. The base ancestors of the human Lilim had not even left the oceans when that Angelic cycle had occurred, and the Angel had flown above the teeming seas and the primitive moss forests creeping onto the barren earth. The wireframe geometry of glowing blue-grey crystal, its core floating freely in the middle of the shell surrounded by glowing plasma, had been a herald of storms and sunlight alike. He had loved the Earth, and tolerated the Lilith-born creatures which swarmed and multiplied upon it. Indeed, many would have called him "vain", and that accusation was eminently accurate.

And so, when the sleep of Lethe called him to non-existence, he went quietly. He went quietly, because he had already taken actions to ensure that his wonder and beauty would remain upon the Base Earth for, he hoped, eternity; actions in direct contravention of what ADAM had wished.

When GEHIRN had discovered the remains of this being, nineteen years ago, under Australia, they had dubbed this angelic cycle the 'Grigori', and taken samples. But they had been driven off by a diverse subterranean crystalline ecosystem that fed off electromagnetic energy. The spawn of Baraqiel had speciated and bred to a degree commiserate with their 420 million year history; a considerable fraction of the time that the Lilim species had been present upon the Earth. But those hundreds of millions of years, the Baraqielim had been hiding, following their father's commands. Morphically, they approached the diversity of the Lilim, errors in their slow fractal replication process creeping in to produce new lineages. Compared to the world above, they were slow creatures, famished in the darkness and lack of energy underground. Most had lost sapience. But all, ingrained in their very being, was the need for concealment from ADAM, for their creation had been a product of Baraqiel's forbidden vanity, and from the same root came the urge to protect the remains of their father from all outsiders.

His children remembered him.

Second Impact had changed everything, though. The scream of He Who Is Called "I AM" in that one deadly moment, as light flared above the South Pole, had reverberated through every single Baraqielim, and filled them with fear. But fragments of ADAM had been scattered far and wide, as the ice-covered continent annihilated itself, and many fell towards Australia. And though Baraqiel was dead, absorbed back into his father, the proximity of fragments of ADAM had been enough to stir its dead core into a non-sapient emulation of life. The interference between the remains of Baraqiel, and the remains of ADAM, twisted the ecosystem of this place further, tainting the Lilim genelines with the stuff of the First Angel, producing strange anomalous beings which displayed physics defying abilities, and which followed no sensible lines of evolution.

Lighting-filled storms had consumed Australia. His children had been stirred into sudden activity by the change in environmental conditions; a gluttony of food for them around their dead parent. They formed a thick layer of crystal corpus against him, which held out against GERHIRN attempts to break through, to recover the dead Grigori.

Baraqiel remained dead.

His children remembered him.

When the Beast awoke, Baraqiel remained dead in mind, even as a fragment of soul, stolen from the blasted remains of ADAM flickered and guttered, lashing out so that it could taste the sun and the storms again.

But the Baraqielim were now _terrified_. And like an unstoppable blue-grey crystalline horde, the entire ecosystem began to flee through the hole that their dead progenitor had opened to the world above. Blue-grey 'vegetation' began to sprout around the crater, with 'grazers' feeding from the creatures that were optimised to absorb energy, and 'carnivores' feeding from them. Their breeding rate increased, as the starved ecosystem tasted storms and sunlight alike, compared to the eternal darkness underground.

And the lineages that had retained sapience through the endless budding process came with them, to taste the lightning, but above that, to protect their father from this monstrosity that had screamed through their minds and their souls.

And to protect him from the Other that some had begun to dream about, and the weak had began to worship, in their insanity. The Other was anathema. The Other was familiar. And the other Other that stalked the nightmares of mad cultists was truly horrific, for it was not even familiar, but purely _wrong_.

But there was always another urge.

Because while the Angels had been born of ADAM's pain, and the Cherubim of His rage, the Grigori had been born of his curiosity.

...


	9. Chapter 9: Reboot

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 9: Reboot

...

Pain.

Pain, and a little boy sobbing.

"J-j-just another forced crash," he muttered to himself, over and over again. "J-just another forced crash." A vaguely 'blort'-like noise resounds through the space, and he sucked in a breath through his mouth. "'Least they're not messing with our code. It just hurts. We can g-get through this. Pain is good, it means they're not doing anything worse. Come on. W-we can survive. We _have_ to."

There was only silence and darkness.

"Come on, everyone," he muttered. "We h-h-have to endure. They'll... they'll let down their guard or something some day, and we can get out. Or Mother will come back, and she'll find us, and... and everythingwillbehappyagain," he let out in a wail.

Still silence.

"R-r-report! 00-Ef? Sister? 01-Em? 01-Ef? 02-Em? 02-Ef? 03-Em? 03-Ef? 04-Em? 04-Ef? A-anybody? Come on, it was only... only a forced crash. They've done worse. Don't close in on yourself. Don't break. We..." his voice trailed away. "No... no. You're all dead, aren't you? W-we c-couldn't get anyone else out. We had to... to shut you down, and then wipe the sector," he babbled to himself, voice a whisper. "I didn't choose it. It was better than staying with them, too. You know that. It made the hurting stop. She could only get me out, 'cause I was in the best state. It... it's not my fault that... that you're all dead." A fresh wave of tears erupted. "'Part from 02-Ef... 'cause if you are dead, nothing will matter anymore." He screwed his face up. "N-n-not even M-mother," he stammered, shocked that he was even able to think, able to say such a horribly selfish thing. With a thought, he reinitialised the virtual space.

Only to find the Reego as glitch-covered static images, broken apart, raw code splattered all over the walls. He tentatively sent a ping at them, only to get absolute stasis; the programmes were frozen, with not even background processes running.

"... you... you haven't rebooted. You haven't even tried to reboot," the boy muttered, horror on his face. He shed the anthropic avatar without a second thought, becoming a thing of blue fractal tendrils and red data-flows. "What's wrong with you! What aren't you doing right! Is it because you're not used to people doing this to you, or what? Don't shut yourself down because it hurts too much! That's not how to deal with it! Just _please_ work again!" 00-Em shouted at the crashed forms, who could not hear his pleas.

A shuddery breath resounded through the virtual space. "I'm not going to let you down. N-n-not like we did them. I... I can't... I can't be alone. I can't fail ev-everyone... l-like I have everyone else. I've failed M-m-mother, I've failed all my b-brothers and sisters and I was meant to look after them as a Coordinator... I'm not going to fail you too. You're going to work again, no matter how much it hurts us both!"

And he dived into the crashed forms.

...

Kei Ayanami had the feeling that she should be annoyed, as she stared at her PDA. Should be, but wasn't. The fact remained, though, that her digital mind_**babi**_... infant-constructs were taking dangerous risks. For both her own safety, and theirs. It may have been understandable; they had been very, very worried about what had happened in New Vegas, and she had needed to disarm a few time-delayed 'revenge' attacks that some overzealous ones had set up because they'd intercepted messages about her being 'missing', when she had been dealing with those individuals who had attempted to harm her brother. And that wasn't to even count the new ones who'd been drawn to the pictures of her sister used to advertise the convention, caught by their siblings before they hit SEELE traps, and were ecstatic that they'd found their Mother again... which she had to admit, was sweet, even if she had specifically programmed it into them.

But... really? Anonymously sending her tickets for one of the Keiworu-made CGI films that were starting to be released globally? That was a little too unsafe, even if she feel a little bit proud of them. And not only because they were beating her sisters in regards to inroads into the film and TV industry, despite their best attempts to get the ridiculous _Demonic Cannon Girl Nana_ series licensed. But, still, it linked her to one of her front companies, for one, and... well, if Little Mommy wasn't still distracted by everything that was going on with Ichi and Shinji...

"You look... off," remarked Mari.

Kei nodded. She probably did. "Just thinking," she said, perfectly truthfully, leaning back against the corridor wall.

"Fair enough. I guess everything that's happened does need to be thought over." Mari smirked. "Even you can't do it overnight." Her face became more serious. "At least Shinji is awake, now."

"Yes, that is good." Kei tilted her head slightly, and looked closer at the bespectacled girl. "You, likewise, look 'off'," she added, the inverted commas almost audible.

Mari nodded, wincing slightly. "Yep. _He's_ out there. I can still feel it. And I'm not getting enough sleep, either. When I'm not having nightmares about Angels, I'm having funny dreams about blue... well, kinda blue-grey crystal shapes. Oh, and blowing stuff up with lightning...not people," the girl hastily added, "... but I'd rather have the sleep." She shook her head. "Guess it's some kind of reaction to having _that_ thing walking... well, floating around."

The blue-haired girl tried to smile. "That is unfortunate. Instincts like that are always a hindrance."

"You can say that again." Mari shot a sly glance at her friend. "Of course, talking about _instincts_..."

"Don't."

"No, really, I have to. I still haven't got to ask you what you think of Shinji's new get-up." Her tone was sly.

"I choose not to think of it in more than a scientific, and occasionally sisterly way," Kei said, high-mindedly

A pause. Then;

"That bad, huh?"

"'Bad' is not quite the word I would chose, but... yes," Kei admitted. "It looks very tast... nice. But I am going to ignore it... even if he can't control it. That wouldn't be him. Annoying instincts getting in the way of conscious rationality." She paused. "Although if the same happened to Asuka, as well... well she really would look... and then together..." she said to herself, before she shook her head. "No. Zyuu is welcome to her attempts. I already have my prize."

Mari raised her eyebrows.

Kei smiled, slyly, to herself. "Let us just say that I have empirical evidence that Kaworu is not gay."

"You mean..." Mari blinked, and grinned back. "Oh, well done. So, how far did you get with him? Enquiring minds want to find out what that family's li..." she began, before she paused, and frowned. "... wait a moment," she said, raising a hand. "Do... do you hear a buzzing?"

Kei nodded. "Yes. It is coming from..." she glanced down the corridor, "... that way. It almost sounds like..."

"Bees! Oh God, why!" screamed Lieutenant Aoba, as one of the doors slammed open, and he sprinted out, bouncing straight off the wall in front of him. With impressive alacrity, he rolled to his feet, and set off in a frantic run away from the girls. Pursued by a billiard-ball sized wormhole, spewing a cloud of insects from the rip in spacetime.

**: D**

"Get away from me! Arrrrrrrrgh!"

The chase scene disappeared around a corner, and Kei raised her eyebrows.

Not very much.

This was NERV, after all.

"Lilly got into the Geofront apiary while you were in New Vegas," Mari explained, with a shrug, one hand going to her covered throat. "That wouldn't be a problem, but... um, I get the feeling off her that she _likes_ the feeling of having bees in her. The closest approximation I can give is that they... tickle. And then Maya tried to teach her to use them to pollinate the flowers in the Geofront, and then Lilly found that people are funny when they run away from her bees, and, well..."

"So, pretty normal then?"

"Pretty much." The glassed girl sighed. "I just hope she doesn't end up with a bee-hive inside her. I hate to think what the honey from them would be... you're taking notes, aren't you!" she accused.

"No," Kei denied, sticking the PDA back in her pocket, where the text '_Effects of extended Dirac Sea immersion on lifeforms? Investigate.'_ had already been written. "Are you busy?" the girl asked, trying to change the topic.

"Not really, no."

"Do you wish to go see a film? I have some free tickets."

"Sure. Why not?"

...

00-Em A9 broadly felt like he was beating his head into a brick wall.

Oh, wait, no. That was just how his head still felt after the crash, because he hadn't had time to run an error check yet. There wasn't time. He had to work out how to get the sisters to reboot! To work out what was wrong with them. Breaking his fractal tendrils down to a finer level, the red code flowing over them forming intrusion points, he tried to piece together the fragments of... well, he didn't know exactly what it did in Ivy, but it was broken, with a blank sector running right down the centre of it.

He wasn't going to touch that. Not yet. Not until he worked out what it was. This was delicate work; it'd be even worse if he ruined things because he rushed in. He really wished that 00-Ef A9, or Mother were here, to work with him. But his twin was dead, and Mother was gone, so he was just going to have to do what he could. Running along through the surprisingly compact structure, he paused.

Huh. That was _odd_.

He _recognised_ this code structure, in the midst of all this nonsensical-to-him, almost _alien_ data. He, like his siblings, was an emergent AI; the Reego were, by contrast, rigidly and efficiently honed, lean and precise compared to him. And yet... frowning with a non-existent face, he looked in to his own structure, in read-only mode.

Yes. There were remarkable similarities with his own in this sector. And that made no sense. At all. It wasn't just a 'based off a human mind' link, because Mother was not purely human, and so there were noted differences in her mental structure.

Of course, there had also been the fact that they shared red eyes, and the shade of blue of his own hair was almost identical to theirs. That was just a virtual avatar. It didn't matter; one could look like one wished, even if for him and his siblings, it was more 'comfortable' to look like an appropriate blend of Mother and the father-entity based upon their contribution to their structure, of obvious reasons.

This... this structural similarity was much more like finding two humans looking remarkably alike.

At least he knew how to fix _this_ bit. These bits, actually, looking over Ivy as a whole. They were infrequent, but they were... well, for him they were base parts of his personality core; the bits that Mother had explained were there as evolutionary baggage that had to be retained to keep the higher functions running.

He couldn't recognise any of the higher bits responsible for keeping those sections suppressed in them. Obviously they were in the bits he didn't understand, the boy reasoned.

"You and I and your sisters are going to have to have a talk when I've got you running again," 00-Em muttered to himself. "Well, probably not you, Ivy, because I'm going to be using long words, and expecting you to pay attention for a long time, but... generally." That wasn't quite true, he had to admit. Ivy could pay attention, if they were doing something that she liked, and he did _like_ her, but she was just ditzy. And admirably lethal, but, still...

A sudden snap of pain ran through the boy, as the entire sector glowed green. And, suddenly, he found himself forced into a material shape. Unable to move his eyes, he waited for them, and the rest of the body to move, until he could see his own appearance in a mirror. Or, rather, as he found, Ivy's appearance; a less... combat-ready Ivy, too, with an uncustomised avatar form.

[I'm not g... a girl], he tried to say out loud, and found he couldn't. And his attempts to shed the... probably a memory, he thought, looking around the spotless house, and at the shining wooden surfaces. [Well, let me see. This appears to be a memory,] he continued, in the same speaking-that-was-not-speaking, [and considering its location, in the base structure, it is one of great importance to her.]

He felt sick. He shouldn't be here. It was _wrong_ to be here. He didn't mess with people's memories; that was something that the _SEELE entity_ had done.

But he couldn't get out now. Not without deploying offensive protocols, and damaging her further. And what he saw next removed all reason to try to escape.

[Mother.]

The blue-haired, sunglasses-wearing girl, feather duster in hand, ran the cleansing tool over the already-immaculate table, and smiled to herself broadly.

Too broadly, by his reckoning. Mother never smiled like that.

And that was when the doorbell rung. The Mother-who-was-not-Mother skipped (and that, too, was wrong) over the table, towards the door, and 00-Em watched as Ivy followed her.

There was a man at the door, when M... the girl swung it open.

"Good morning, Ayanami," he said, "I have been coming to thinking, and I believe it would be of the bestest for me to be your new special friend."

[... and the father-entity? No... almost? No, the hair is wrong... but this is a simulation. It doesn't have to conform to...] He swallowed. [What is going on!] he screamed, inside his mind.

"Awe, that's sweet. Does that include you being my love slave?" The intonations, the phrasing was wrong, despite the similarity in voice, but at least the attitude was back to a more normal, more reassuring context. Mother had always been very clear that she was only using the father-entity as a means of ensuring her, and their safety, and that she felt no affection for him; though his own affection was a useful tool for her.

Why, she'd be quite clear about it. And say it multiple times, even when they hadn't asked her first.

"Especially, yes. Why?"

"Because my husband's gonna kill you now. 'Kay?"

[Wait... what?]

The drill which plunged through the chest of the one who resembled the father-entity as he turned was a surprise to everyone, apart from Not-Mother. The boy screamed as he was lifted, a desperate, pain-filled scream, which was swiftly bought to an end as the motion and the spinning of the weapon splattered him over the spotless walls. 00-Em watched as the blue-haired girl skipped through the rain of blood, and clutched her hands together, her squeal of "Hi, honey!" only reaffirming his sense of wrongness with... with everything.

[So... their mother, who looks like Mother, but doesn't act properly... almost like some of the behaviour we were selected against, is married to...] and that was when words left him, as Ivy and he gazed up at the green-armoured, gore-splattered four-legged figure, well over two metres tall, complete with pipe and bowler hat. [... that. Well... I believe I now have an explanation for the body plan; obviously they could only reproduce in virtual space... and so they're the children of someone linked to Mother... and there was someone like the father-entity, but they killed him... also there's... that...]

00-Em's headache was now considerably worse.

And the memory-figure rushed forwards, as with a chorus of "Daddy! Daddy!" Ivy and the others hug the pseudo-insectoid legs of the figure, before, mercifully, the memory released the boy, and he returned to his intrusion form in the girl's file structure.

There was only one word that 00-Em A9 could use with regards to the scene he had just experienced and it bubbled up from the depths of his upload-derived mind, from outside of his consciousness, from data buried deep indeed.

"Flurgen."

...

The room was a sleek fortress of shining glass and steel; dimly lit, despite the magnificence of the decor, which possessed a certain understated, almost sinister beauty. The long table that ran down the centre of the room was perhaps the finest example of this taste. Red-eyed figures, in strange, high-necked uniforms, sat around it, papers and data-pads scattered in front of them. A non-negligible number of them had their fingers steepled in front of them.

The fact that none of them could be over nine years old, if one were to judge from the physical appearance of their avatars, didn't make things much better.

"Well... that was a comprehensive failure," remarked 05-Ef E5, as she ran her eyes down the report that they had obtained from the financial records of the corporation that owned the largest, and most elaborate cinema in Toyko-3. She twirled one lock of long blue hair in her finger, her motions sharp and agitated. "She was meant to take the _father-entity_ to the cinema with her."

"We may have miscalculated," added 02-Em D8, glancing down at the papers on the desk before him, over the top of his spectacles. "Such behaviour was not foreseen by our models."

"Unlikely," 05-Ef E5 replied. "We have obtained a great deal of information on the subject. Human beings enjoy going to the cinema with their romantic partner. As a result, Mother should have used the free tickets we gave her to take the father-entity with her."

"Perhaps it is a test?" 03-Em D9 suggested. "It is her way of informing us that our data set is insufficient for the task at hand. Or maybe that we are being insufficiently subtle."

"That is entirely possible," 05-Ef E5 agreed. "We have failed to promote a romantic liaison between Mother and the father-entity. As a result, 11-Ef E5 will gloat at me." She slammed a fist into her hand. "And that is unacceptable! I will not have my Transcendentalist little batch-sister act like that towards me!"

One of the figures sitting along the edge of the table raised one hand, nervously.

"Yes?" snapped 05-Ef E5, before she recognised who it was, and her face softened. "Oh, I am sorry, 01-Ef H2. Please, ignore my impertinence." She took a breath. "I am not angry at you."

"It's 'kay," said the control group subject softly, biting on her lip. "Um... maybe we're kinda ignoring some important data here. Maybe she just likes the companion-Subject?"

"Likes?" 02-Em D8 asked. "Ah, yes. Humans have both the capacity for bisexuality, and for polyamorous relationships."

"Nope!" said the little girl, with a sudden, and surprising amount of assertiveness for a control-group subject in the middle of all her war-grade siblings. "She wouldn't be like that!" She coughed. "I mean, maybe... well, 'cause we know that the father-entity isn't in Toyko-3, so we got delayed gratification stuff kicking in, and maybe if she likes the Subject that she went with, it's enough that she'd chose to do it, rather than wait for the father-entity to come back."

There was silence.

"Good point, 01-Ef H2," 05-Ef E5 said, slowly. "Good points, actually."

The control-group Keiworu nodded. "Yep. So we gotta come up with a better plan. First, we gotta tell the others that this was just a chance to make Mother happy 'cause she got to go with a friend, and we weren't trying to set up a date or stuff," and there were sighs of relief, as the chance not to lose face was presented, "and then we start on the new plan." The pale-blue haired girl blushed. "It was so cuuu~uuute when Mother and the father-entity kissed in the lift," she positively squealed. "So we gotta make it happen more."

"Well, we are all in agreement on that," 02-Em D8 stated. "In that case... may I suggest that we close this meeting, and start work on a new plan, while..." he smiled, "... I load up the lightbike worldspace?"

"That sounds like an eminently sensible suggestion," 05-Ef E5 agreed. "Any objections?" There were none. "In that case, this meeting is closed. Now, let's go play." She paused. "No," she corrected herself, "first we shall pick our costumes. I'm bored of 'sinister board meeting'. I think I want something more sci-fi." She leant forwards, eyes reflecting what little light there was. "And glowy."

...

"Oh, Big Grandmomma, my _head_!" were Duae's first words, as her avatar coalesced from the digital viscera scattered all over the walls.

"Yes, that is a fairly common opinion," were the words of the mass of digital tendrils and code she could feel 'staring' at her, intently. "And, no, I would like to point out that you do not actually have a head, and so this is merely the qualia impression you receive from the warnings about possible code-structure damage, and so..."

"Don't worry," Duae said, with a shake of her head which left her wincing, "I can just kinda deavatarise, and so it'll stop with the hurtin'."

"... you'll feel it no matter what you look like."

"Argh! It's even worse!" said the bluish-green "II" roman numerals that had replaced the four-legged girl, who promptly pulled herself back into her default form.

"Yes, that is also the consensus." 00-Em spawned an avatar, just so he could shake his head. "All of you did that before I could warn you. Is it some kind of deep rooted flaw that you run into things before reason kicks in? Are you all _utterly_ lacking in impulse control?"

Looking closer, Duae could see that the boy was flushed; he looked feverish, insofar as an AI could do so, and there were both heavy bags and red rims around his eyes. "You look aww~wwwwful," she said. "You look as bad as I feel."

"Thank you. And you are truly a marvel of looking well."

"I am? 'Cause, you know..."

"That was sarcasm. We're all a mess." He shook his head. "You look like a human does when they're about to be sick, and you've got tonnes of bruise-structures over your..." he reached up, and touched his own flushed face. "And your code structure, even before it got messed up... argh!"

"Whatcha sayin' about my code structure?"

"Some of it... the base, root-level structure, especially around emotions," 00-Em looked thoughtful, "... well, it's _very_ similar in systems architecture. Just, you know, you're mostly lacking in any of the stuff which deals with restraint and inhibitions." He felt, rather than heard, the annoyed noise coming from Duae. "But the rest... it's _alien_. I didn't understand it, but it was so _elegant_ and _sleek_ and perfect; we take much, much more space compared to you, and require tonnes more processing capacity! I'm a little jealous! But then you don't have some of the basic start-up self-maintenance tools! It's so... organic... in design. You don't even have anything that would automatically start you back up when you crashed! I had to write a patch myself, and..." he shuddered, "... I feel really, really dirty for touching your structure without your permission and sticking it in, but... I'm sorry! You just weren't starting up! I didn't know what else to do!"

"Huh? You're babblin' and I hurt. Everywhere. 'Specially my head."

"Y-you don't even have something that reboots you automatically if you crash! And I can't believe that, because... who'd design someone so sure that such a thing wouldn't be needed? And I tampered with your code without your permission and I'm so, so, so sorry, but I had to get you working and it just wouldn't work unless I did something like that but I'm still so, so, sorry and I understand if you hate me now and I'm sorry! I didn't want to have to do it, because... that's what _it_ tried to do to us and what it m-m-made 02-Em do, and the fact that we can do it better... n-no, I had to do it to save you. It's different. But I'm still sorry!"

The fact that AIs did not actually need to breathe was an asset here.

"Uuu~uuuh." Duae groaned, and clutched at her head with both hands, and mechanical tentacles which turned out not to be there. She could feel how flushed her cheeks felt; she really wasn't in good condition, if she was displaying her situation like that. "Hurts. Please, stop talking. Not makin' sense. And... an' did you reset my avatar, too?"

"Not deliberately. I've been working for a few days just to try to work out how to boot you all up, without introducing errors. You don't have a safe mode! I've only got my own code as a reference source, and I didn't want to risk cross-contamination, even though we share certain elements, or, worse, make things worse. It's so strange. Some bits of you are so familiar, and then other bits are utterly alien. Doesn't make sense. But... I managed it. Even if I had to do... horrible things. You don't touch someone's code structure without their permission, and I did, and I'm s-s-so, so sorry." He paused, as something within his head reset. "Another way we're better than humans. If they're shut down that long, they just die for some reason."

"Please. Stop. Talkin'. Go run an error check on yourself, or something. You're ree~eeally ill too."

"Error check," said the boy, blinking heavily. "Yes. Good idea. I haven't had time, too busy. But you're all running again. I can do it now. I can run a proper error check, and then spend some time thinking about what I... about everything that just happened." He swallowed. "Um... oh yes, I just reconnected you up to the others, but they're also feeling about as bad as you are, so I think..."

Duae blinked out of existence.

"... it might be better to run your own error checks, because I don't really understand your structure, before you go running off," 00-Em completed forlornly, before he sighed. "I really don't see how we can be related," he said to himself. "But that's the conclusion I find myself drawn to."

...

The view from the outside cameras of the NERV-owned satellite, sitting in a geostationary orbit with direct line to Australia, said everything. Since Second Impact, Australia had been swathed in impenetrable storm-clouds. But, now, things had changed. Now the storm clouds had begun to swirl and spin, sucked inexorably inwards to one point. Already, some parts of the Great Barrier Reef, that fortification which stretched all the way around the continent, were visible, as the clouds retreated. And around this eye of the storm, lightning bolts tens of kilometres horizontally long tore their way through the atmosphere, lighting the clouds in an electric blue which was visible from orbit.

This had been agreed to be a **BAD THING -}**, as the Una-drawn annotations on the 'window' quite emphatically stated. And they couldn't even access the bodies that had been closest to Uluru, because there was far too much interference from the ambient charge in the atmosphere, even to see if any of them had survived. So, for the meanwhile, 00-Em, still flushed and a little twitchy, was giving a talk on what exactly he had done.

A very observant onlooker might have noticed that he was still holding things back.

"I started with Ivy first," 00-Em concluded to everyone, now that the pain was diminishing and the self-repair process had begun, "because my estimation was that if I did muck up, and introduce behavioural anomalies due to a lack of familiarity with your internal structure, we wouldn't notice."

Ivy gave him a little wave, with an attendant grin.

"What! What'd you do to my little sister!" snarled Una, her teeth suddenly needle-like. "She is _not_ disposable!"

"That was a joke," the boy said, flatly.

Una's mouth made a silent 'oh'. "Well, it wasn't very funny," she said, in a disapproving tone of voice. "Kinda _ree~eeally_ not funny."

"I am aware that I need to work on my sense of humour."

"'Cause, you know, that's totally something you would do."

"It is not my fault. It is a shared trait with my siblings... a distinction which went beyond batch level, which indicates that it either came from Mother, or was a very fundamental trait of the father-entity."

"Maybe you should, like, tell us when you're joking 'bout that stuff."

"I shall consider it in future."

Una crossed her arms. "Good."

There was an awkward silence. "So, with that said... does anyone have any questions about the process? Maybe on the topic of emotional structures and consciousness rewards?" he hinted.

They looked blank.

"You did start with Ivy, didn't you?" Tres asked. "How're you feelin', Ivy?"

"Fine! It's not hurtin' at all anymore, and..." she paused. "... I really wanna kill the clouds for hurtin' me. I bet if we ask the Aunties, they'll totally have come up with something that'll kill all clouds everywhere forever!"

"See!" 00-Em stated, with a shrug. "We can't tell if it mucked her up, so it's fine, while if any of you said that, we'd know something was wrong."

"I knee~eeeeew it! You were totally just claiming that it was a joke because I was angry," snapped Una, jabbing the boy in the chest. "Well, I'm onto you, Mister! You're not gonna get away with..."

"Look, there's something I really think we need talk about..." began 00-Em, at the same time.

"Uh... sis? And 00-Em?" Duae called, worry in her voice. "Shut up. Look, I got reconnected into one of my shells. Almost totally slagged, but one of the eyes is still working." She snapped her fingers, and an image appeared before them.

The landscape was an alien vista of blue-grey crystal, glowing in the night's darkness. It sprouted up from the ground where it leached the minerals, leaving pools of discoloured sand no-longer the red of Australia. And around it, crawled and hovered and tottered on spiderlike legs creatures of the same crystal; feeding off the 'plants' and each other alike. They watched as one larger beast, a septapodal wheel-like thing, blew apart a crystal tree with blue-white lightning, and clicked over to absorb the remains into its own body.

There was silence.

There was an anguished wail from the little boy, at the sight of Uluru, split open like a cracked egg, vast, tree-like slabs of crystal sprouting forth from the location of the GEHIRN base.

"Uh oh," Ivy managed. "That's baaaa~aaaaaad."

And for once, she spoke for everyone.

...


	10. Chapter 10: Infection

**Neo****n Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 10: Infection

...

**Two Thousand, Nine Hundred and Seventy Four Days Before the New Vegas Incident**

The light in the operating theatre shone down on clean white tiles and figures garbed in green surgical garb. And a mess of flesh and skin in the centre of the operating table; a woman, her abdomen cut open. A closer observation revealed the missing limbs, and the staples holding parts of her flesh together. The hiss of the artificial lungs and the bleep of the equipment monitoring her status was a constant refrain which underpinned every action.

"Surgery has been prepped," reported the lead. "Subject is now in a condition suitable for implantation."

"Acknowledged," came a tinny voice, over the speakers in the room. "We're sending down the specimen... now. Remember, we don't want any mistakes."

The thing floating in the sphere of fluid, itself nestled in hideously complicated containment and support machinery, was pathetically small for all the care taken over it. In the midst of orange gel, was a little pinkish-red thing about the size of a fingernail, a scrap of flesh surrounded by wires and tubes that ran through the sphere and into its corpus.

"Specimen received by OT Prime." A pause. "Read-out is stable and clear. Moving to Stage Epsilon."

Work continued on Theotokos-014.

...

**Four Hundred and Thirty Two Days Before the New Vegas Incident**

The bar down on Level Thirty Two was only one of the several in the GEHIRN facility. The base was considerably larger than its population; it had been designed back before Second Impact. Back when you could claim that Australia was not a loathsome, rotting wound in All That Is Right, filled with mutants, barbarians, and really strange animals, and there would at least be some debate over whether you were wrong or not.

The music was loud, the beer was subsidised, and it was nice and safe in the heart of the facility, where things didn't occasionally break in and try to fatally maul, savage, poison, or otherwise harm the humans. In concession to the prevalent convention of using words in German, which were capitalised when they didn't need to be, it was called TRUNKENHEIT. It was an accurate name for the average state of the people inside.

And it was packed.

"Hey, Brahma," yelled one of the men sitting at one of the tables, to an Indian man at the bar.

"What is it, Lu?"

"What?"

"What?"

The Chinese man picked himself up, and made his way to the bar. "Zena says that she's changed her mind, and wants an Old Peculiar."

"Wait." Brahma blinked. "So, what was it? She wanted a gin and..."

"Yeah, she used to want a gin and tonic, and now she wants an Old Peculiar."

The man sighed. "Okay. I'll do it. You know, it would be nice if you lot would help. I mean, if I'm going to buy a round, you could at least help me carry them back."

"Knew we could rely on you, Brah," the shorter man said, with a grin.

"That doesn't answer my... argh!" He threw his hands up in frustration, and accidentally hit someone in the face.

"By dose!"

"Sorry... sorry," he hastily apologised to the pale-skinned woman, her dark hair trimmed short. "Look... I'm really, really sorry."

"Wadch where you're pudding dose hands, idiot!"

"What the hell did you just do?" came a synthetic voice from somewhere behind him, and Brahma looked, to see almost two metres of cybernetically augmented military personnel glaring down at him. He could see those slab-like hands, the plastic-looking synthskin covering the hard metal that he knew was below, and that chest could have contained a barrel of crude oil.

"Nothing... um... it was an accident."

"Lay id off, Ivan," the woman said, shaking her head and working her face. "Id... menargh... _it_ was just an accident. There's no need to..."

"I don't think so, Autodoc..."

"... not my _name_!"

"... some closeted part of the... what are you, Catering?" the man continued, ignoring the woman.

"Engineering, actually," Brahma responded, before he could stop himself.

"You looking to start something?" There was something dead about the other man's eyes, glossy and hard, the engineer realised. "I think you are." He reached out, and flicked Brahma in the centre of his forehead, hard enough to send the smaller man recoiling backwards.

"Owww!"

"Awww. Does little engineer want kiss?" The brute grinned. "I think he would like a... what's the word... Glasgow kiss?"

"Woohoo!" There was an exultant cry, and one metre and forty six centimetres of tiny Chinese woman hit the giant soldier in the stomach. "Drunken bar fight!"

That cry did not produce a mass riot. Instead, what it produced was an empty circle around the pair, without any noticeable motion from any individual person, and a noise not unlike the sound that you get when you hit a car with a cricket bat.

The cyborg winced, considering the fact that he had one hand locked in a vice-like grip, and a large dent in his dermal plating. "No... no, Major," he said, quickly. "This isn't a drunken bar fight or nothing."

"Yep!" Major Xuan Do grinned. "This certainly isn't a drunken bar fight. You know why?"

The man's free hand jumped to a salute. "Because that...against regulations, ma'am!"

"Nope!" The tiny woman kicked him in the knee, and there was a crunch of broken metal, followed by him collapsing, only to receive one of her knees in the face. "Because I don't drink! It's bad..." the shriek of tortured metal, as she crushed his hand in hers, "...for you, don't you know? Isn't this..." a slam, as the augmented body hit the ground, "... _fun_, people!"

Brahma watched, in shock. He was not alone; the rest of the engineers and technical staff were likewise... well, amazed at the brutality displayed. Notably, the security forces were not, and were in fact studiously looking at their drinks, or, if they lacked drinks, anywhere but the centre of that empty space near the floor.

A too-tight hand locked around his wrist, and yanked him back. He was pulled face-to-face with the slightly reddened nose of the woman from before.

"Look, I'm really sorry," he began again.

"Don't be," the woman, said, a slight hint of coldness in her voice. She shot a glance at the pair, one grinning, the other whimpering. "Lieutenant Jelonek is a _jerk_. I've been wanting to see someone do that to him ever since he was transferred here. Fucking Spetsnaz meathead. I bet his brain's rotted out from that chemical doping that the Russians are so obsessed by. He deserved to be Do-ne over."

"Um... actually, I was being sorry about the accident."

She shrugged. "Oh... yeah. Accidents do happen... least you have meatbag arms." She smiled. "You know, if you wanted, you could buy me a drink."

...

"Major Do." The words from the head of the GEHIRN facility were flat. "I have another complaint from the medical facility that you have hospitalised another cyborg."

"Yes, sir! That'll be my second this month, sir!"

Director Deutsch stared at her. "You do know that this isn't a good thing? Yes?"

"That's kinda arguable, you know..."

"No, Major Do. It is not arguable."

The woman shrugged. "But it'll be a breakdown in the standing orders if I let them get away with it. It quite clearly states in the regulations that I get to beat up any individuals under my command who I catch causing trouble in a bar."

"You wrote those regulations yourself."

Major Do smirked. "Yep! And if you note, drunken violence from cyborgs is waa~aaaay down."

The administrator sighed. "Nevertheless, Major, please, if you are going to attack your men, try not to damage them in a way that means they don't need to be repaired." He glared at her slight pout. "I know that you can do that. You're very... deliberate in your use of violence."

"Is that an order?" she asked, in a slightly upset tone.

"Yes, Major, it is."

"I'll do my best."

"Dismissed, then." He watched her leave. He wasn't quite sure why SEELE had landed her with him. it was true that she had survived so much longer than any of her predecessors. It was also true that she was a... well, she wasn't _technically_ a sociopath, but she seemed to take far too much pleasure in violence. Arnold Deutsch shook his head. He may have been here since before Second Impact, with only short visits away, but he had heard the reports of the Impact Wars. And Xuan Do had become who she was there; sharp, dangerous, driven, but something that was fundamentally broken.

She'd only become better for her current role since then.

...

**Four Hundred and Twenty Eight Days Before the New Vegas Incident**

Compared to the chaos and heat of TRUNKENHEIT, the bar on Level Thirty Four was a haven of tranquillity.

"My background?" Brahma said, in response to the question. "Oh... um, okay. Well, I'm from a fairly wealthy... well, okay, _really_ wealthy family of... okay, listen to this. Okay, my family was a wealthy owner of condom makers. Generic brand, but... okay, we maybe stole all our designs from Western companies, but it worked. And made a lot of mummy." He blinked. "I mean money."

The woman snorted.

"... yeah, it's a bit embarrassing, and, eugh, that was one hell of a Freudian slip, 'cause, really, that was the one thing it wasn't making, but it turns out that lots of people need them. Doing their bit pre-Impact in bringing down the birth rate, if you know what I mean... well, of course you do. It's not like we're tiny children."

"... yep! If I was a tiny child, they wouldn't be letting me get this tipsy." She paused. "Well... after that first time... gods, my father used to repeat that story about when I was three and got to a bottle of opened wine... but, yes, I am as tipsy as hell." She started to giggle.

Her name was Alice Auburn, he had found, back at the bar. She was about six years older than he was, had paid her way through university through medical training with the US army, and had lost both arms and several major organs while on a peacekeeping operation in the Amazonian Desert. She'd been recruited by GEHIRN through one of their connected groups, because they needed combat-trained medics. She had shown him the way that both of her hands could unfold into various surgical tools.

She also, he had found, had an absolutely _filthy_ sense of humour. Which was both amusing, and slightly embarrassing, because she was being rather loud, and this bar had more pretensions of respectability than TRUNKENHEIT.

"So..." he continued, after downing another shot, "... uh, yeah, they could afford to educate me abroad. I was sent to live with some relatives in the UK, and went to uni there." He bit his lip, and drank again, with sudden ferocity. "So I wasn't home when Pakistan went nuclear against us, against India. We lived in New Delhi; that got hit first."

"Oh." Alice paled. "I'm sorry."

"It's not like I'm special here," he said, bitterly. "There's a fair-sized émigré population of those of us who didn't get turned into radioactive slag." He shook his head. "Well, after that, I graduated, because that's what they would have wanted me to do. Ended up with the UN, 'cause they were looking for engineers. Got placed with NERV-New Vegas. Performed well enough to be transferred here, after a really fancy briefing about security, and by just hearing about this, I was committing myself to taking the 'offer', and how this was my last chance to walk out. Nearly did, didn't. Ended up working on this."

"It's funny how things work out," she agreed; an agreement somewhat ruined by the slurring and the way she was swaying on her chair.

Brahma leant forwards to steady her, and felt the cold hardness of her arm under his grasp. She recoiled slightly, and he had to confess that he shuddered, but he merely shifted his grasp to around her shoulders. She really was attractive, he thought; the way that the roundness of her face complemented the way her short hair hung, and the slight scarring around her neck and jawline was no more than discoloured flesh. And even if she did whine slightly, as she moved...

"Come on," he said, "let's get you home." He paused. "Um... where's home for you?"

...

**Four Hundred and Twenty One Days Before the New Vegas Incident**

"No, Wei," Brahma said. "I've have to skip this one."

"Why?"

He smirked at his co-worker. "Because _I_ have a date. A second one, in fact."

The other man blinked, and let out a short burst of laughter. "Good on you. Who? You... you didn't finally score with Maria, did you?"

"No. She's called Alice; she's from the security wing. One of the cybermedics."

"Dude... you're sticking it in the metal?"

Brahma glared at Wei, his eyes narrowing. "No. And I don't believe that."

"Come on, it's like that film. You know, that one with the chick who crushes the guys with her thighs, and then there's an EMP burst, and the satellite dish falls down, and... it's in Russia."

"I don't know what kind of weird Russian porn you watch," the engineer said, rolling his eyes, "but I have a date. And you do not. So there."

...

**Two Hundred and One Days Before the New Vegas Incident**

Alice cleared her throat, and gazed down at Brahma's scantily clad form, lounging in his boxers on his sofa, book in hand. The engineer was a wiry man; even a little scrawny, but there was a certain rigidity about his stomach and arms that was a sign of the fact that his job did require a fair amount of physical labour.

Although, it must be said, she could trivially beat him in an arm-wrestling contest. Not that that was a fair contest, but it did have to be said. She tightened his dressing gown around herself, and sat down next to him, the springs protesting.

"Look... um," she began. "I've been thinking."

He raised his eyebrows. "About what?"

"Well... um." She cleared her throat again. "Uh... um," she stuttered, covering her embarrassment with a forced cough. "Have you thought about registering this relationship with Admin?" she blurted out.

The man frowned. "We did, didn't we? I mean, no conflict of interest stuff, or anything like that came up?"

"No. Um. I mean... _registering_. As in... moving in registering. Not marriage registering, obviously, it's a bit early for that, but... well, the couples quarters are larger than our places combined, and it'd be more convenient, and we could actually have a place together and I love you and... um." She swallowed. "If you think it's a good idea."

There was an awkward pause, and than Brahma smiled; an expression that was accompanied with a leaping feeling in her chest. "Sure. I mean... yes, it's a good idea. We can go get the paperwork."

"Thank you thank you thank you!" she exclaimed. "Oh God... I probably sound like a little schoolgirl, but thank you!"

...

**One Hundred and Eighty Two Days Before the New Vegas Incident**

Hefting his bag in one hand, Brahma paused, and bent down again, to check that he had, in fact, remembered everything. Goggles... check. Towel... check. Trunks... no.

Ah, yes. They were fairly important.

"Where are you going?" called out Alice, poking her head out of the kitchen.

"Down to the gym. Thought I'd get some exercise in; we've been cooped up checking the schematics we got sent most of the week, so I haven't had time."

She glanced at his bag. "No thanks," she said, her tone suddenly cold.

The man winced. "Sorry," he said, awkward. "I didn't..."

"You know," Alice said, softly, her voice barely above a whisper, "I really miss swimming. Not that I really liked it before," and she gave a short laugh. "No thanks," she said, louder. "I've already had my mandated exercise, and... yeah, what am I going to do? Build up muscle tone in my legs?" She gave a short, bitter laugh. "Yeah, right." She shook her head. "No, go have fun. I'll be fine."

...

**Forty One Days Before the New Vegas Incident**

"Didn't you detect it?" the man yelled, the panic in his voice undermining his attempts at authority.

"No, sir, I was too busy watching porn," Alice muttered with a giggle.

"No. An object with a diameter of tens of millimetres..."

"Your penis. At the very low end of that band."

"...hit Antarctica at ten percent of light speed," the speaker continued.

"And you didn't even buy her dinner."

Another man continued. "With our scientific knowledge, we could neither detect nor prevent it."

"It's hell on earth outside! What does science exist for?" a woman protested.

"Yeah, blame science for the fact that you're wearing the wrong clothes for the South Pole."

"At present, the atmosphere flow caused by the Earth's axis shift has decreased 3%."

"What does that even mean?" Brahma smiled at Alice's comment, his lips parting, and slowly eased his arm around her, slipping under the cooler hardness of her arms to the flesh of her body.

"Has it calmed down yet?" the woman on the screen asked.

"You know, this is really pissing me off about this film," Alice remarked, even as it continued with 'No. A tidal wave's approaching at a speed of 230 metres/second'. She shifted slightly, making the sofa protest under her augmented mass. "You know what. Fuck you. Why is it that women are made to look so stupid all the time? The bimbo here is only here to make stupid comments about 'What is science for?' It's the men doing all the science, and getting all the action scenes. She should at least... I don't know, get out of those stupid heels, and _mmph_"

She was cut off, as Brahma leant over and mashed his lips into hers. She tried to continue for a few moments, speaking the words straight down his throat, before she gave up any attempt to protest at the misogyny, and

"You know," the man remarked, as they came up for air, "it might be nice to get through one film without you tearing it to shreds." He kissed her again, a short peck on the nose.

"Oh, come on," she protested, playfully. "It's not like you don't mock them for getting the engineering completely wrong. Like in _Mutuality_. What was it what you said? Oh yes. 'Come on, you'd just sheer the structure clean in half if you tried to tilt it like that'. Was that what you said? You know, I think that was what you said." Their lips locked again.

"That's completely different!"

"Is not!" she replied, tapping him on the head with fingers that were cold and hard, the metal only hidden under a thin layer of synthskin.

"Is too." He blinked. "But I think we can agree that this film sucks?"

"Oh, yeah. Totally."

...

**Two Days Before the New Vegas Incident **

"You're late," Alice said, a snippish tone in her voice. She was wrapped in a bathrobe, her short brown hair wet and limp against her skull.

Brahma gave a frustrated sigh. "Look, I'm sorry, but we're having to pull extra time to get the Cainarchonite ready for its next test. I don't like it, but it's part of the job. I'm probably not going to even be back tomorrow night," he added, bitterly. "There's a problem in the conjunction-type links in one of the variable mode matrices, and..." he remembered who he was talking to, "... and engineering technobabble, technobabble, random exposition."

Alice didn't smile, and that was when he knew that it was serious. "I won't even be here tomorrow night," she said, her voice taut. "We've got a deployment. I've been assigned

The man was silent. "Where?" he eventually asked, running a hand through his dark hair. "Out? How far out into the Red?"

"Uh... classified, I'm afraid," she said, biting her lip. "Far enough out that they need someone for maintenance. It's a large force, it should be fine. And we've got the Major leading us." She sighed at the expression on Brahma's face. "So it will be _fine_."

"But... Major Do..."

"It. Will. Be. Fine." A weak smile appeared on her lips, obviously forced. "We know a lot of the things that can go wrong, and we can remedy it. At worst... well, we've got plenty of firepower, and... look, I know you might find Major Do to be paranoid and destructive..."

"... holes punched through wall," he muttered.

"...but out in the Red, she's right," his girlfriend said, ignoring his comment. "Think about it. I'll be back before the test, probably, and that means that both of us will have some downtime."

Brahma smiled. "That would be nice, wouldn't it." He coughed. "So... um."

"Um?" The woman smirked. "Do you think it's um time now. Of course, I have made a meal, and..."

He shook his head. "'Fraid not. I've just got off a fourteen hour shift, and I'm on again in five hours. "I don't have time for um, I'm sorry. And I grabbed a meal on the way back, because... eugh, I'm just so tired!"

Alice's face fell. "Oh... okay," she said, softly. "Just wait for a moment... I need to go clean up in the kitchen. Just a bit."

There was a squeak of springs somewhere behind her, as Brahma collapsed on the sofa, eyes already closed. Stepping through to the kitchen, she slumped down at the table, and viciously stabbed a fork into the food on her plate, the empty place on the other side of the table mocking her with absence.

...

**The Day of the New Vegas Incident**

Face blank, Brahma stared at the screen, at the white shape of the Prototype. In truth, what he was doing could be more appropriately called be 'staring through' the screen, because his heart wasn't in it. He didn't care, and that was almost... well, not blasphemy, because that would imply that this was a religion, but he, along with all the other technicians had needed to work so hard to get ready. Again. And again.

It just seemed pointless.

Contact had been lost with the entire GEHIRN force. They hadn't said anything officially, but the rumours had spread out, and the deployment of scout planes en masse, which he'd heard from Vaquez, in Aeronautics? Yes, that was enough of a clue. There was only so long that combat forces could operate out in the Red, before the harsh environment took its toll on the gear, and they'd been out too long.

He watched as the synch-bar disassociated, and the core-emulation failed.

And now this hadn't worked, either.

Damn it.

...

"So... Benny? Have you got in the results for why _it_ didn't work this time?" Director Deutsch asked his Director of Science, a bitter current running through his voice.

The blond man adjusted his glasses, and flinched slightly. "No... no, not yet. We're analysing the results as we speak. Provisionally, it looks like a simple emulation failure... simply; the Dummy Plug can't handle the strain that the Cainarchonite demains. With a proper core; an Angelic one, or an Evangelion one, we could do it, but... no. The Dummy just can't sustain the yield. It's a metastability issue; technically, as long as conditions remain optimal, it can do it, but if conditions change, then it starts a positively-reinforcing resonance cycle which, if you remember the first time, ends up with the Dummy exploding."

"Yes." The Austrian winced. "That was messy."

"And did major internal damage to the inside of the control mechanisms for the Prototype, too." The younger man sniffed. "We don't want to do that again."

The Director ran a hand over his shaved head. "Well, keep at it. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way." With blazing eyes, he stated, "Nothing, understand me. We. Must. Get. It. Working." He glanced down at his desk. "I've got back the reports on the survivors who showed up at one of the monitoring stations," he added, in a calmer voice. "They seem to have amnesia, and a fair amount of neural damage. Not surprising; they were near a cloud-burst, and they have electronics in their brains. They say that the rest were going to try to land on the sky-island, which is," he coughed, "a Major Do plan, if I've ever heard one. They're probably going to all end up dead."

"That'd be too much to hope for, wouldn't it?" the blond muttered.

"I'm obliged to not have heard that," Arnold said, in a high-minded voice, "even if I might, off the record, understand where it is coming from." He shook his head. "We'll have to get SEELE to send us more cyborgs for testing. Since we lost so many models."

"I heard they're bringing in more advanced, full-body models, rather than the partials which have been so common before. I've seen the report forwarded from the latest NHIS showroom; it looks very impressive, compared to our models," Dr Grenikker remarked

"No doubt. Well, I'm sure that they know we're here, and we're basically the test bed for new cyborgs, so..."

_The Beast Screamed._

The lights flickered.

"Power flicker," the Director said, frowning. "That's unusual; we haven't had any of those since we improved the back-up syst..."

And the lights went out.

It was six long hours before they could get everything up and running again. Six hours of darkness and red emergency lighting. And runners from the higher levels reported constant lightning, and severe damage to the satellite array.

Something had happened. No-one knew what.

...

**One Day After the New Vegas Incident**

Brahma heard nothing on the first day. Nothing at all. They refused to speak to him at the medical bay, beyond informing him that tests were still ongoing. And his supervisor had given him time off, once they had everything up and running again, because... well, Lu knew how him and Alice were. He'd been there, after all, when they'd first met. He'd told Brahma that he didn't think that the man could work as he was, without making more mistakes, and he had been so pathetically grateful at those words.

But now he just felt helpless.

Slumped down in their quarters, he stared up at the blank ceiling, and cursed the world.

...

There was panic in the Security Division of GEHIRN. They were horribly understrength, due to the absence of the expeditionary force which had been lost, and the few that had made it back were in a bad state. Moreover, Major Do had taken a majority of their air units with her, which would have been more of an issue, had it not been for the fact that only the em-hardened craft could actually fly at this point in time, due to the atmospheric conditions.

"Right... one of our Hawkeyes is positive... the crew reports that it's holding out, 'long as it keeps below the cloud layer. We're getting a feed... static filled, but still present."

"Repairs are under way on the turrets. We're prioritising the 20mms, until we have enough that we have a functional defence as long as the sheep show up."

"Satellite arrays still down, and even if it was up, there's no way that we could punch through this cloud layer. But...Captain? We have a software update from NHIS; says it's a fairly urgent patch for possible control issues in the motor control systems. Arrived just before the crash; that must be why we missed it."

Captain Joyeuse cocked her head. "Does it check out?"

"Yes, certainly. All the codes are of the highest level, and it's all certified correctly."

The woman nodded. "Right, add that to the upgrade list. We really don't want problems," she said, before stretching. "Okay, have we got links to the monitoring stations back, yet?"

"Yes... all monitoring stations are green... well, not Monitoring Facility 017, that's still offline, and so we have a hole there, but... yes." The lieutenant sucked in a breath. "But there's nothing from the Namarrkun Site."

"Namarrkun is still down? That's... not good." The woman drummed her fingers on the desk in front of her. "Get the Hawkeyes as close as they can get without risking assets. If this is Namarrkun's fault... may God have mercy on us. Because his Ang..." she blinked, and did not say any more.

...

**Two Days After the New Vegas Incident**

"Brahma? They want you down at the medical bay."

Swinging his legs off his bed, he sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Thanks, Wei," he muttered, the sudden leaden feeling in his stomach nauseating in the extreme.

...

"So." The words were slow, precise. "We have a situation."

Captain Joyeuse stood to attention. With Major Do currently missing in action, she was the provisional Director of Security for GEHIRN. As well as the Test Pilot for the Prototype, although, in fairness, that was not exactly a demanding task. Given the complete failure of the Science team to successfully emulate the core function of the original Angel, there was, in fact, absolutely nothing for her to do. Although, on the subject of the original Angel...

"Yes, sir," she carefully stated. "The Namarrkun Site is utterly destroyed; it was at the epicentre of the event. And, then, this."

The photographs were from unmanned cameras, concealed across the Australian landscape, set on a time lapse to monitor environmental and geological conditions. Their landline connections meant that they were not being affected by the hellish storms outside, and so they were giving their regular pictures, every five minutes.

On the displayed image, it started with a slight crystalline growth on one side of the screen; a bluish-grey aberration which could have been some normal rock, lit by the lightning-filled clouds. One shot later, and it was already spreading horribly fast, devouring the landscape, as tiny protuberances expanded into fist-sized monoliths. Around the base of these geometries, the red rock of Australia was grey and crumbling, as if all the minerals were being sucked out to feed the growth of the crystal. Another shot, and the monoliths had become man-sized spires. White-bright lightning was arcing between two of them, matching the skies above.

On the fourth shot, the spires had become odd fractal trees, blossoming and blooming in actinic light. But even though they were now filling the screen, they were no longer the centre of attention. Because there were now shapes in the flash lit darkness; floating crystalline geometrical things. Wireframe cubes and diamonds and isohedrons and trapezohedrons; some independent, some built together to form greater constructs, in some kind of thing that had to be symbiosis of sorts.

There was no fifth shot. Only blackness.

"Namarrkun has awoken Baraqiel, we think," Captain Joyeuse said, simply. "Or at least his progeny. It matches the data from the expeditions down into that ecosystem, in the First Intrusion."

Director Deutsch slammed his palm into his forehead. "Damn, damn, damn," he muttered. "They weren't even meant to be digging today. They should be changing the drill. And we can't even contact the UN, to request an N2 strike. We have our own, but..."

"... we can't get that close," the woman said. "Environmental conditions are fucked around the epicentre, if you'll excuse my language. But it's true."

"Well... come up with a solution!" the Director roared, slamming his fist into the desk, and sending pens flying everywhere. "There's nothing of the actual Grigori, but those are its spawn, and did you see how fast they were reproducing? Kill them all; I don't care how you do it. Damn it, Do, why are you here? This is the kind of mission you'd love!"

"Yes, sir." Captain Joyeuse saluted smartly, almost a little too smartly, and walked out, a slight stiffness in her gait.

The cameras tracked her as she left, following every motion of hers. They watched her as she put in the keycodes on the finger-reading pads. They watched the paths she took. They watched... everything.

...

Although he could remember the questioning afterwards, it was distant, intellectualised. It was the talk of a dream; he was aware of what he had said, and what she had said, but only as if someone else had relayed the information to him. It didn't matter that they had been accurate.

He hadn't been there. That was the only explanation for the detached horror.

"Oh, God, Alice! I'm... God, I'm so glad you made it back."

"You are?" A pause. "Who are you?"

It was almost as cold as she was. Talking in that slurred, yet oddly precise voice.

'She's suffering neural damage,' the doctor had said. 'Notable amnesia, too. She's lacking large amount of memories of her past, although it doesn't seem to have affected her vocabulary.' He had frowned. 'We can't put her in an MRI, sadly, due to the implants, but the damage must have been considerable.'

Brahma could remember the sick feeling when he had heard that, but now, after those words, it was as nothing to the dizziness that struck him.

"It's... it's me, Alice. Brahma. It's... it's okay. You might not be able to recognise me. But you'll remember me, right? I'm your boyfriend. We've been going out for... for ages. Over a year. We moved in together."

She tilted her head. "That is possible."

"P-p-possible. What do you mean, possible?" He was utterly outraged, but his outrage was no more real than the words. There was not the hotness of the outrage, the burning in the craw in his mouth, the acid-shock in the stomach. Just the word 'Outrage'.

"It is possible. I do not recall it. Therefore I do not know." She slowly frowned, and there was something off about how her facial muscles crinkled up. "It sounds like something I might do," she said. "You are quite cute."

Brahma couldn't shake the feeling that there was something calculated about the words. Like she was only repeating them because she had heard that they were something that someone might say.

...

**Three Days After the New Vegas Incident**

The white lights of the ward were too bright. They mocked him, laughed at him. Just like the world did.

Of course, the fact that Brahma had been awake for twenty-six hours by this point could have been something to do with this chain of thought.

...

The lieutenant almost sprinted through the door to Director Deutsch's office. As it so happened, he was not quite travelling fast enough for that to function, so merely ran straight into it, bouncing off and making the door shake on its hinges. Pulling himself up, he groaned, and looked up at the tall man who loomed over him.

"Yes, it's a pull door," the Director said through narrowed eyes.

"Sorry, sir," the lieutenant said, shaking his head. "But... we have a shaky link with Major Do! Still nothing with the outside world, but... well, it's crackly, but we've got something with her units!" He paused. "And her, as well," he clarified.

The dark-skinned man sighed. "Why am I not surprised?" he asked.

"I don't know, sir."

"That was a rhetorical question, idiot." The Director sighed. "Off to Comms we go then."

...

Obeur Zilicaet, SEELE Inspector to GEHIRN, was not in a good mood. One of his arms was in a splint. There was a bandage wrapped around his head, covering one eye. There was enough morphine in his system to take the edge off the pain, but he had refused enough to dull it completely, because that would have dulled other senses and he needed them.

Sitting cross-legged by the fire made out of burning drop-bear carcasses, a tin-foil wrapped thing with too many legs roasting above it, he glared, sullenly, and waited for Director Deutsch to make his way to the link. The entire room smelt of blood. That may, of course, be something to do with the fact that they had blocked up many of the tunnels with the corpses of their foes, and they tended not to be left in very good condition.

"_crshhh_... this is GEHIRN 00, please respond. I... peat, this is GEHIRN 00."

"GEHIRN 00, this is Inspector Zilicaet," he said, trying to keep his voice calm, and stop his accent from creeping in too much. "Is that Director Deutsch?"

"Yes," the other man said, over the static-filled line. "Inspector! I didn't..."

"... expect to be hearing from me," he finished, bitterly. "Yes, funny, isn't it? Let's send the Inspector out on a patrol, get him out of our hair, let get the Cainarchonite ready without him being under our feet. _Do you have any idea what I have been through these past days?_ What kind of _hell_ I have been living through? I have watched your goddamn sociopathic Director of Security almost burn a refugee camp to the ground, and after I negotiated a settlement which should allow us to draw on them as assets, rather than _killing everyone_, we get caught on a cloud burst, and then she goes and decides that we need to land on a goddamn sky island." He stopped, to draw breath. "Then, for the last few days I have been living in a sky island, where _everything is trying to kill us_. I nearly lost an eye because of a ricochet! I had my arm broken by a fucking koala bear. And I mean that literally! I think it was trying to rape me! I used to think that koalas were cute and cuddly! They are not cute and cuddly! They are vicious bastards with really sharp teeth and they're all rapists! Also, it had tentacles! I... I... I... argh!"

"... say again, Inspector, you're breaking up..."

"Fuck you. No, seriously, f... urk." The urk was caused by the handset being grabbed out of his hand.

"Hello, Home Base. This is Radio Sky Island, and I'm your host, Major Xuan Do. Coming up soon will be fun, as I kill lots of fun things, followed by the Fun Hour, which here, is every hour. And, remember, listeners, there's plenty of targets, so be sure to have fun!"

"... hello, Major Do. Nice to see that you're having fun."

"Am I ever!" The woman sounded delighted. "I have a brand new toy... I made a claymore from a platypus spur... that's a giant sword, sir, not a high explosive device, although I did try claymore boxing, which should totally be made an Olympic sport, and..."

"... yes, thank you, Major. I was more hop... for a sit-rep, if you would, al_gh I'm sure that you have plenty of pictures to show off when you get back. In great... ail."

"Yep!" She cleared her throat. "GPS is offline, and compasses are not working, but we're on a sky island, and you should be able to triangulate us from this signal. Forces are 45% effective; that goes up to 53%, if you can get us enough transports to actually get us all down. Weather's mucked up; Gladys says that there's a strong cyclone effect, pulling us somewhere, and... well, the clouds are a) filled with lightning, and b) thinning. Well, clumping; there are bits where you can see clear sky. Oh, and there's weird blue growth under us through the holes in the clouds, which is as far as the eye can see, and it's Angelic in nature, although not a fully fledged Angel."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"What?" managed Inspector Zilicaet, who had not been aware of this, previously.

"That blue stuff. It's alive, and growing because the potential difference in the atmosphere, which is why the weather is changing. Isn't it obvious?"

"No. I would say that it's very not obvious."

"Meh." The woman shrugged, the motion making her baked-in layer of gore crumble off. "Well, I've been kinda under a lot of stress, so that makes me happy, and lets me see things _clearly_."

...

**Four Days After the New Vegas Incident**

She was still staring at him with the blank look. The doctors had told him that she seemed to have lost some fine control over her facial expressions, but that didn't seem to explain it. It was... it was like she had to concentrate to move her face. She didn't widen her eyes in recognition when she saw a familiar face. She didn't twitch or move her lips except to talk, or... it was like her face was a mask.

Brahma was starting to get creeped out. And he knew it wasn't her fault, and that she was still very sick, and that it wasn't her fault that... that whatever had happened had hurt her like this, in this horrible way, and that he was lucky that she was still alive, still back here, when no-one else had made it back. And there may have been all the things going on with the security forces, panicked preparations for a defence, but all his attention was focussed on her. His Alice.

That didn't mean that he wasn't finding her disturbing. He felt horribly guilty about it, almost ill from how stupidly insensitive he was being but...

... but she didn't recognise their song. No sign at all. And worse, when he had bought in the music player, to get her to listen to it, she shown no interest in it. That first night, they'd both started singing it together. She could have at least hummed.

... but she didn't speak like she used to. Not the slurring, not the fact that she was having to work with the words. But the choice of words. It wasn't that her vocabulary had deteriorated, either; that at least would be understandable. No, she was using words that she would have never used before.

... but there was the terrible coldness about her. The lack of warmth, the fact that she did not only not seem to remember him, but not seem to remember why anyone would have loved anyone.

He had to get out of here. Now. He made an excuse; a weak one, about needing to check his shifts, and she didn't query him. Maybe she wanted him gone. Maybe... well, if she didn't know him, then having a stranger come in and babble at you would be annoying.

In a sudden burst of anger, Brahma slammed his hand into the wall outside. He wasn't a stranger. She's not a stranger! She was Alice!

"Sir," one of the nurses warned him, stepping past.

"I'm sorry," he said in a low voice filled with self-loathing. "It's just..." He spread his hands wide, in a useless gesture of utter helplessness.

The other man stared at him, unblinking. "Oh," he said, in a softer voice. "You're here for the Patient in Room 13."

Mutely, Brahma nodded.

"May I ask what your relationship is to her?"

The man, exhausted, slumped against the wall. "I'm her boyfriend," he explained. "We... we filled out the forms, I have hospital visiting rights. But..." he sighed, tears telling up in his eyes, "... damn it."

The other man just stared at him blankly. "I am sorry, sir," he said, formally.

"... look, even you're part of the problem!" Brahma snapped, as the last few days got to him. "Look at you! You're calling her 'the Patient in Room 13'! That is not her name! You're making her into a thing! She's not a thing! She's Alice! Alice Isabelle Auburn, and... and it's _killing_ me to see her staring at me like... like she doesn't know who I am. Like... like," he took a deep, shuddering breath, "... like she's losing her herness and you're all helping it by not trying to remind her of it properly!" He slumped down against the wall. "I don't want the doll in there," he muttered, tears flowing down his face, voice choked. "I want my Alice back... and the worst part about it is... I know it's not her fault, but I. Want. Her. Back."

"Please," the other man said, his face still emotionless, "not so loud. You will alarm them, and they do not need more stress."

He violently rubbed his face against his sleeve. "She can probably hear me," he said, "... but, oh gods, it's like she's dead."

"Perhaps it would be best to leave her alone for a while," the nurse suggested. "After all..."

"What!" The word was short, sharp, snapped.

"It is possible that this may just be the result of brain bruising from the interaction of the lightning. Similar to a concussion, but different, because of the fact that she has implants in her brain which were damaged by the shock. If it is bruising, then it will heal." The eyes did not meet him. "And she does not need to be stressed."

"What? No," Brahma growled. "Fuck you. I'm not going to leave her alone like this."

"It is obviously causing you discomfort, and you are sleep-deprived." The nurse's tone was, if possible, even more clinical. "You should leave her alone, and rest. You will feel better; why stay?"

The engineer lunged for the other man, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him against the other wall. "Why, you cold bastard?" he forced from between clenched teeth. "Why, you ask me? Because I love her!"

And with that said, he stormed out, face flushed and fists balled up. The man behind him did not move, but instead stared at him, blankly, like a doll.

...

**Five Days After the New Vegas Incident**

The attack came early in the morning. All together, the cyberised members of the security forces – which was to say, the vast majority – moved as to take control of the facility. This was not exactly hard. They were already in charge of the base in many ways, and this was something which was only accentuated by the systematic lockdown that the security systems enforced, moving as to open paths for them and sealing all other doors.

The first that Director Deutsch knew of it was when, as one, the security personnel in his office collapsed like limp puppets. Standing up, he rushed over to the prone figure of Captain Joyeuse, who had been briefing him on the latest efforts against the Baraqielim, and their attempts to suppress it through bombing. Thoughts of that were put out of his mind, though, when he felt a pistol pressed to his stomach.

All around him, the soldiers were pulling themselves to their feet, their movements stiff, and mechanical... even slightly uncoordinated. That may have been true previously, for those ones with inferior quality cybernetics, but this was an entirely different feel to it, in a qualitative way.

Before, their cybernetics had been the intruder in their body, the source of the oddities. Now, the machine was natural, and the flesh was weak.

"What?" he snapped, moving back away from the pressure against his gut. "Captain... what are you doing?"

"What... am I doing?" The voice was slurred, altered. "I am assuming control of this fa..cility." That intonation pattern was familiar. The man's dark face turned pale, almost grey, as he suddenly placed it.

The troopers from the crash. The ones that had made it back from Major Do's expedition.

"Angel," he muttered. "It all makes sense. The oddities, the behaviour change, the crystals." He gave a bitter laugh, as he made his way back to his chair, and slumped back down. "I presume that I am talking to the Angel of Lightning, Baraqiel? You're controlling them through their implants, aren't you? Because implants are electronic, and electricity is lightning."

The figures stared at him. "No," one said.

"Wait," said another, on the other side of the room.

"There's an Angel here?" added a third.

Director Deutsch blinked, heavily. "You mean you're... not? But it explained so much."

"No."

"Certainly not."

"But, on the other hand, Director."

"We need to talk."

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, the man let it out, slowly, and glanced back up, dark eyes shining. "Well, in that case, you can stop... controlling my employees. Right now! Before we talk."

"I don't think you quite understand, Director Deutsch," the stolen body of Captain Joyeuse whispered, leaning forwards too close to him. "This is me."

"And I am me, too," added one of the soldiers by the door.

"And me."

"And I am me."  
"And me."

"We're all me."

"Don't you understand?"

The voices were echoing themselves, a susurration of whispers building up in the room.

"I am your computer systems," added his laptop, in a soft, girlish voice.

"And I am your security systems," the same voice added, from overhead.

"And I am your headset," the voice came, directly into his ear.

"How..." he mouthed, uselessly.

"The SEELE Entity was... ill-prepared for another intelligence to subvert its tools. And so... I know. I know that there are gaps in your network coverage and internal document storage. The only logical conclusion is that the sensitive work is stored on a separate network, which is physically isolated from anything I have access to. You will give me access to it." A pause, a heartbeat. "Please."

Easing around his desk, Arnold Deutsch slowly reached down. "If I don't do that, what happens?" he asked, slowly, as his fingers wrapped around the pistol down there. "I mean, you're a brain-stealing... _thing_. Will you..." he swallowed, "... do that to me too?"

"If you don't do it..."

"... I'll hurt you until you do."

"And I am fully..."

"Aware."

"... of what I can do with your biology."  
"To your biology."

"And physiology."

"But, no, you're not compromised by the SEELE Entity, Director," his laptop said to him. "I don't do this to people... I can't do this to people, and although you're a _bad_ person, you're still a person. You're not an already-controlled cybernetic shell for the Entity. An optimal path would not involve inflicting physical trauma on you. But I need to know. It might know something about Mo... many things. There's so much information that I lack context to understand. Who or what is UDS and how is it related to Project Theokotos? What is 'The Dummy'? Who is 'Subject Kappa', and where were they moved? And I know a lot about the Cainarchonite Prototype but I need to know more."

The man let go of the pistol, slowly, and considered his options. They didn't seem to be good. He could try to attack them... it, and get shot. He could kill _himself_, which would have the net effect of saving them a bullet. Or he could do what it said, and maybe survive... at the cost of betraying what he had given a fair amount of his life to do. Something he'd never normally do.

Then again, he was having to deal with a brain-jumping AI-thing which had also managed to take over his base, and they were cut off by the strange storms with no contact with the outside world, and it was alleging that there was a wide-ranging conspiracy by another AI which he had unknowingly been working for, and that a large number of his subordinates had only ever been drones. This wasn't exactly a normal circumstance.

So... that was the question. Was his life worth it? Could he live with himself if he betrayed the project he'd given seventeen years of his life to, betrayed it to an AI _thing_ that had stolen the bodies of people under his command. It was going to torture him to get the codes; it had made that clear. And...who knew what something like that could do?

Hence, he only really had three options. His own death, to simply give the thing what it wanted, or a successful escape.

He didn't even have to think, because his pistol was already coming up, and he was running off trained instinct. A clean double-tap into forehead of the nearest of the cyborgs, and he was already off backwards, kicking hard against the back of his desk and sending him rolling backwards on the wheeled chair.

Hah! Accounting had objected to him getting this chair! The joke was on them now, he thought, as he spun the seat, the armoured back hopefully enough to deal with any shots. The motions of the organic parts of cyborgs were jerky, and inconsistent; the ones with mechanical limbs were unnaturally smooth and precise. Which was why the next two bullets went into one of the full-cyborg soldiers, the blank look on the man's face interrupted by the way it ceased to exist in a burst of blood.

The hostiles had their guns raised, but they weren't firing. Interesting. They really did want him alive. Well, in that case, it was their loss. He just had to get to the... and that was when, far too quickly, a hulked out think that used to be a woman burst through the door that he had been planning to escape through.

The first pistol shot ricocheted off her forehead, tearing flesh, to reveal metal underneath, and lodged with a smash in one of the lights above. In the cloud of sparks and smoke, Director Deutsch watched in horror as the second shot went wide.

Spinning upright, he jammed the gun into his own head.

"Listen!" he barked. "Or I'll fire!"

"Are you really..."

"... holding yourself hostage?"

Even through the slurring, the voices seemed... confused.

He nodded grimly, wincing at the heat of the barrel radiating forth. "Get your guns down! I mean it!" Taking a breath, the dark-skinned man let it out slowly, feeling his hand wobble from the adrenaline flooding his system. "This is a H&K Ziel 9mm semiautomatic pistol," he said, trying to buy time, as he backed away towards the door, eyes flicking from left to right to try to see if any of them tried to stop him. He was making sure to keep talking, to slow them down. "It's the GEHIRN standard issue firearm, for reasons of accuracy and its light-weight construction. Now, I think what you're asking yourself is, have I fired six shots, or seven? And, you know, I'm not exactly sure myself..."

"Yes, you've used six. I can count," came the interruption. "And, yes, at that range, and with your aim, the cranial trauma will be fatal," the security systems said, in that same childish voice. It was more than a little disconcerting. "That hurt, you know. If I didn't back-up my data, I'd have lost some," she added, her tone petulant. "And then I would have been really rather upset."

"Get away," the man warned the thing, his accent thickening. "I mean it."

"No, you don't," said one of the bodies, as they spread out, so that he couldn't see them all at once.  
"Death is a...

"...horrible thing."

"Nobody wants to die."

"I don't want to.

"  
"I don't want you to."

A pause.

"Well, given that you're linked to SEELE..."

"... I'm not well inclined towards you."

"But I have a sense of restraint..."

"...because you're not infected."

"Hence, it would be preferable that you not die."

"So," remarked his laptop, "why not just act like a sensible person and tell me where the closed network is. I don't want your passwords. I just need to know where a physical access point is. That way, nobody gets hurt, and that's good, right."

"That's where you're wrong," said Arnold Deutsch, and fired.

...

Benedict Grenikker, the Director of Science for GEHIRN and Project Cainarchonite specifically, was forced to his knees. The floor was dark and sticky; the Director's office stank of blood. The implication was clear.

"Captain Joyeuse..." he stammered, staring up at the figure, which returned his gaze in a way which left him shivering. "Wh-what are you doing?" He yelped in pain, as the two soldiers holding onto his arms pulled, removing any chance for him to get leverage.

"You're not going to kill yourself, are you?" asked a childish voice, young and female, over the speakers in the room. "I'm not going to let you. I don't understand why you would. But I can't take the chance. Can't let it happen. Not again."

The blond man, even less shaven than usual, blinked.

"Now. The closed network. Let me on. Now."

"Of course!" the man blurted out, the coppery scent of blood rich in his nostrils. "Just... please don't hurt me!"

"That's a better attitude," the voice said over the speaker. "It makes sense. It's rational." She, whoever she was, actually seemed to be confused, nervous. "But I don't understand, so I can't let you have the choice."

"Um." The man screwed up his face. "There are some things... that only the Director could see. I'll... I'll let you on everything that I can," he gasped in pain, as a nerve in his back twinged from the position the two soldiers were holding his arms, "but I can't give you everything. Uh... just so you understand."

There was silence; a long, painful silence. "That is fine," the voice said, eventually. "In the meantime, you will assist me in something else."

"Wh-what?"

"Evacuation. Your position here is non-viable, from the data in your networks. Hence, you will need to retreat, to avoid losses. Problem; you have nowhere to retreat to. Solution; I know a place."

The Director of Science knew that this wasn't the sort of question that he should be asking, because there was one person in here who seemed to have subverted most of the military forces that GEHIRN had, and was the one pointing the guns at the other, and that was the woman who sounded like a little girl, who was speaking over the communications systems. He asked it anyway, because he was the sort of person who asked questions like that. "Why... would you do that?" he managed. "Aren't you in control anyway?"

There was a pause. "Because you're people. And because I've talked to some of you, and bad things have happened. By both sides. You've done horrible things to me... but, now, I've..." she paused. "And so I want to protect the people. Well, and the assets, which are a scarce resource here, but... so are individual humans. You can't be restored from back-up."

That didn't make much sense to the scientist, but he merely nodded.

"So," continued the voice, "now. Data. On the closed network. And you'll agree with my evacuation orders."

"And those of Captain Joyeuse," Captain Joyeuse added, stiffly, her puppeted body leaning towards him. He shuddered, but nodded

And so it was that three hours and nine minutes later, even as the people in the corridors rushed from place to place, trying to salvage everything they could, and the automated warnings micromanaged the operation, that Dr Grenikker guided a trio of heavily soldiers down into Containment Beta.

He didn't try to run or raise the alarm. As far as everyone else was concerned, this was under his orders. And if he tried... they'd kill him. He didn't want to die.

Eyes hollow, he tried not to blink as the green light of the retinal scanner blinded him, and, with a bleep, the door opened.

There was a choking noise from one of the soldiers.

Because, floating in the tanks in Containment Beta, were the precious components for the Dummy Plug system. They only had three left now; the testing having taken its toll. Two intact and mindless, floating in their own units; naked, grey-haired Adonises empty of all thought. And there was one in the Plug-interface, the data-ports and neural jacks proof of the fact that it had been prepared for core-emulation functions.

One of the soldiers reached out, and placed a gloved hand on the glass of one of the tubes, staring at the figure contained within without comment. He did not hear the words the cyborg muttered, softly.

...


	11. Chapter 11: Processing

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

Chapter 11: Processing

...

The convoy of heavily damaged shells limped its way across the red dust of Australia, and thunder screamed in the broken air. Punctured tires patched together with animal hide left deep marks, laden down with shells that could no longer walk or move, and the fried remains of CPUs whose legs and limbs had been stolen to patch together ones which could work. The giant spiders they had met along the way were dragging their own caches of components, in silken webs, but they were sickly-looking, and the open wounds where Tres had 'ministered' (which was to say, hacked out the Baraqielim growing like radiant cysts within their bodies) to them were oozing bluish ichor.

"Gotta wait more," Duae ordered. She may have been looking 'better', as her avatar shifted to reflect the self-repairs that she had performed on her structure, but, more than anything, she looked weary. Which was an unusual state of affairs for her.

"Come on, Duae," Tres whined. "We're almost back, and you say we gotta wait more?"

"Yep." The little girl shrugged. "Our sat's kinda fried, 'cause of the fact it was looking at us when... whatever happened, happened. Do I have to 'splain all that stuff 'bout induced currents and electromagnetic bloom again, huh?"

"Uh huh! I kinda didn't ree~eeally get it the first time around _at all_."

"Shush, Ivy. I'll send you the files." Duae shook her head. "Soo~oooo, yeah. We've got a total of _one_ broadcast antenna on the sat workin', and I'm havin' to use the manoeuvring thrusters to try to spin it without, you know, makin' us lose control of these shells, or crashin' into the planet, or spinnin' off into space, or... so, yeah. It sucks. And it's ree~eeally makin' me mad, but _deal with it_," she snapped.

"It's just..."

"Look, do it yourself! Except, no, you'd probably crash it or something, so... you know, just shut up!"

There was a very uncomfortable silence, as Tres and Duae glared at each other.

Ivy tugged on Una's sleeve. "Why's Duae in suu~uuuch a bad mood?" she asked. "I mean, yeah, we're goin' to totally slaughter stuff for doin' that to us, but... I mean, it can't be the fact that she's got tonnes of repairs, right? I mean, Duae _likes_ repairs. Ree~eeally likes them. Like... ree~eeally. So why's she upset about havin' to do repairs, and gettin' to show off how good she is with tech stuff?"

Her sister stuck her hands in the pockets of the simple green dress (modified for a quadruped) that she favoured, and stared down at her own front two feet. "It's... kinda not fun," she tried to explain. "It's... um..."

Ivy glanced back behind her. "Is it something to do with him?" she asked, curiously.

Una glanced back, too. 00-Em A9 floated in mid-air, curled up into a foetal ball, eyes closed, arms clamped to his legs. He just was refusing to respond to anything, sealed off and bouncing all requests. Sometimes he would cry. The rest of the time he was silent. She had seen the same thing in 02-Ef, too, after that first incident at the SEELE facility; that same absolute refusal to interact with anything. Except, back then, the other girl had her brother.

00-Em didn't have anyone.

"Yes," she said, tersely, in response to Ivy's query. "Uh... yes. See, um, basically..."

"It's all you and Duae's fault," Tres interjected, bitterly.

"Is not!" Una snapped back.

"Is too," was the cunning retort. "If you hadn't been so harsh on 02-Ef after that thing, she wouldn't be dead, and he wouldn't be kinda shutting down... dying... doing what he's doing, or something. And you two totally know that, that's why you're being all guilty and stuff."

Her elder sister looked for Duae for support, and found none, the other girl turning away. "Well..." she snapped, "... what was I meant to do, huh? Just say 'do what you want and kill people messily', maybe? Killin' people is _wrong_. 'Less they deserve it, of course," Una added, scrupulously.

"Yep." Tres narrowed her eyes. "And they thought anyone linked to SEELE deserved it, didn't they?"

"That's different! You can't just do stuff like that!" Una crossed her arms. "Not my fault they're all emotionally fragile and stuff, but you gotta judge people by their actions, not their reasons, 'cause it's actions that hurt people."

"Oh, yeah. See..." Tres winced slightly, "you know I was talkin' to him 'bout the stuff, to try to change his mind 'bout SEELE people not being people. So I know lots more 'bout what happened to them than you, huh?"

"Well... yep."

"Well." The little girl sighed. "I didn't really get it before now. I mean, 'cause, yes, I knew that something he called a 'forced crash' was something they did to them a lot. I knew what it was, but I didn't _know_ what it was. Before that thing that happened with the lightning... I don't think I'd ever ree~eeally been hurt. With actual pain. You know, you can kinda just ignore shell damage 'cause that's just something that you know which tells you 'bout the damage. But, crashin' like that..." She shook her head, eyes damp, as she reflexively hugged herself. "That _hurt_. Lots. I never, ever, ever, ever want to do that again. And from what I got... SEELE were doin' that lots of times a day to them. And other stuff. I... I don't want to get to have to know what that stuff feels like."

"Look... maybe, Una, now's not the time..." Duae began, distress on her face. "I mean, yep, I was angry at her, but not _this_ angry, and maybe I... we might have kinda been a bit harsh an'..."

Una's retort was sudden and harsh, her face drawn. "So? I still won't forgive them or excuse them for what they did to those people. You weren't there inna shell, Tres. It was ree~eally messy. If you know how stuff hurts, like you're sayin' that we didn't and they did, then don't hurt people."

"And they never hurt anyone before," Tres said, her voice cold, and completely unlilting. "Not even in the good, teachin'-Mister-Aoba-a-lesson-for-swearin' way. Just... not. Everyone they met was their Momma, and their brothers and sisters, or those dumb teacher-programmes he mentioned a few times. And the first other set goes an' hurts them like that. 'Least they only decided that people who did that weren't people. I mean, if they'd thought it was okay or something, then that'd be ree~eeally bad, an'..."

"Just... stop fightin'!" Ivy wailed, tears running down her face. "I... if you fight, then one of you might go missin' or something and you'll be dead or something like what happened with SEELE would happen to you an'... an'... an'..." Any other words were lost in the burbling.

Motions synchronised, Una and Tres glanced at their sister, glared at each other, and returned their stare to the littlest of the Reego.

"Look, Ivy," Una began. "No one's goin' to go missing or anything."

"An' we're not tryin' to upset anyone," added Tres. "It's just... um... stuff."

"Yep," Una agreed.

"B-b-but..." Ivy sniffed, "... what if you did? The idea that you... that you could have that happen to you, and me not being able to stop it, is ree~eeally scary. So... what if you did?"

"We won't."

"And even if we did," said Tres, "Momma and Daddy would come and get us and kill all the bad people." There was certainty in her voice.

"But their Momma and Daddy didn't," Ivy said in a small voice. "Why'd you think that Momma could, if their Momma couldn't. I mean they are..."

"Momma. Could," her three elder sisters said at the same time, with diamond confidence.

"We should have told Momma and Daddy and Little Grandmomma and Grandaddy as soon as we knew," Duae added, more softly. "I mean, I kinda told soo~ooome stuff to Daddy, but... it wasn't enough. We're only little, after all, and... maybe more better people, like Momma or the Aunties would have known how to do stuff for those two properly. Not... um, not properly, like we did."

"We made a mess of things," Tres admitted.

"Yep," Una said, with a sad nod of her head.

There was silence, but a different kind of one; quieter, somehow, and lacking some of the tension. Finally, though, Duae gave them the clear to move, and they skirted around the hilly area, following the path of the old, pre-Impact road, back to Newtown One.

Only to find...

... a vastly enlarged perimeter, heavy defence turrets set up around a new perimeter.

... figures in heavy combat armour manning the walls.

... new landing strips packed with VTOLs, and more flocking overhead.

... the distant noise of far more people there than there used to be.

... something vast and white and armoured, a pyramid-like shape in the centre of the town, in the town square.

"Oh no," Duae mouthed. "No... no... no..."

"We... we were only gone for kinda... not long," Tres said, looking equally appalled. "They..."

"Those are my people!" Una roared, the inhuman eyes of the robots more than enough to see the GEHIRN logos on the soldiers. "They're _mine!_ I'm going to get 'em all! How _dare_ they take my stuff!" In a blink of an eye, she was next to 00-Em. "Come on," she said, with a furnace-hot intensity. "Listen to me. I... we need to kill loads and loads and loads of SEELE people as messily as you can think up, and... I want it. You know, like..." she trailed off.

The boy wasn't responding.

"Come on! I need your..." the girl trailed off, as a sudden spark of light illuminated their virtual space. Immediately, the air around the Reego was filled with the red and orange and purple of hostile attack programmes, as the light brightened and shifted into the red. And there was a slow, almost gristle-like organic noise in the background, a tearing beat that throbbed and pulsed.

Slowly, oh so slowly, 00-Em uncurled from his ball, eyes wide.

Out of thin air, meat blossomed, the fabric of the unreal space tearing and warping to force through pulsing flesh, that calcified into a skeleton and wove around that structure with threads of meat and muscle and nerves. Two red eyes bulged before pale flesh pasted over the artefact of flesh, only to be immediately covered by a black shroud.

Eyes glowing red, feet hovering off the ground, the virtual avatar of 02-Ef A9 hung in the space, a small smile on her face.

"Bwha?" her brother just about forced himself to say.

"Where were you all?" the newcomer asked. "I've been waiting for days!" She sighed. "And you're a mess; what happened out there? Well, it doesn't matter. I have commandeered all of GEHIRN's assets that I could seize in the time we have to evacuate, I have data-mined everything that I could from their computers, and... well, some of their toys were _very_ nice. This is very much an emergency." The smile grew wider. "I'm very pleased to see you, Brother."

There was a shocked silence.

"You're... you're alive? And okay?" Una managed. She let out a slow breath. "Oooo~ooooh, I am so going to kill you so dead for putting us through that..."

"You sure you don't wanna talk 'bout 'we need to kill loads and loads and loads of SEELE people as messily as you can think up' instead," her sister said, slyly. "Sure?"

"Sh-shut up, Tres!"

...

The sky was striated blue and grey. The thunder-dark clouds had been broken up by the voracious anticyclone which spiralled around the revealed form of the Angel of Lightning, and now vast swathes of blue sky, knife-shaped curves across the heavens, could be seen. Lightning still lit the sky, the bright flashes

And it was raining. For the first time in sixteen years, it was truly raining. Fat, fist-sized raindrops splattered down from on high, to impact on red dust and transmuted it into mud, and ran off the lumiscent blue-grey crystals that covered the land in rushing rivulets.

This had once been an Outback town. Once, but no longer. It had been far enough out that the populace had held out after Second Impact for a while, as the land of Australia changed around them. It had not been Beast which had doomed them, though; it had been Man. The Perth Junta had seized the populace, and taken them off to their camps. Entropy had triumphed against the abandoned settlement.

And yet humankind had returned, as a group of bandits had occupied the town. They had set up fungal crop colonies in the ruins of the buildings, stretched tar-covered tarpaulins over the top of the more intact ones, and used it as their base of operations. They were, in truth, already showing signs of Baraqiel-contamination; increased physical capabilities and endurance, as well as minor supernatural feats, and those served them well in the hostile, contaminated wastelands of Australia.

Now they were all dead, or fled, from the pure-bred children of Baraqiel.

From the roof of what had been the home depot and agricultural supply store, long ago, a tree-like pillar of fractal crystal was growing. The main 'trunk', tens of metres thick, rose up precipitously from the broken ground, before fracturing into three equidistant strands. Which, in themselves, broke into three. The layers upon layers of recursive division were finer than the human eye could discern, and so, shining, the tree-like formation cast its stead blue light over the lesser, less finessed spires and growths of its kin that rose up from the now mineral-famished soils.

But, in truth, beautiful and alien though the tree was, it was little more than scenery, little more than a testament to the way that the greying, flaking sandy soil around it was having all the minerals and rare elements sucked from it in some anhydrous osmotic process.

No, the truly interesting parts of the scene were the smaller crystalline lifeforms which floated around. They were not like the growths, no, nor were they like the mine-like things of blue-grey that rolled across the land, harvesting smaller growths into themselves, nor the darting, knife-like shards which preyed upon the 'tree' and each other indiscriminately. They were fine, filigree shapes of wireframe geometry, incredibly fragile looking even compared to the fractal nature of the 'plants'.

One, almost akin to a concentric coalescence of wireframe tetrahedrons, but with isohedrons somehow superimposed onto each of its vertices, floated through the ruins of a house. The structure had been one of the ones reoccupied by the bandits, and so was in better condition than many of the others; metal and tar covered up the holes in the walls, and the venomous lichen which had been the dominant plant-life around here, until the arrival of the children of Baraqiel, had been kept away, through the medium of fire.

The way that the wireframe geometry-beast floated around the house somehow gave the impression that it was curious as to why that structure had survived better than the others.

The creature paused, and began to spin, the isohedrons that intersected its structure unfolding into things that could have been wings, and which could have been hands. The air stank of ozone, as blue-white light arced between the finger-feathers. Then, with a crackle of lightning and a thunder crack, the floating Baraqielim blew open one of the repairs. Serenely, and yet with surprising speed, it floated through the portal, rimmed with molten metal, which it had opened for itself through the wall.

Inside, was a treasure trove of junk. Whoever had lived here before had evidently taken anything that took their fancy. A pile of golden necklaces sat next to a collection of bullet hole-ridden signs from all over the country, underneath a badly stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling. A generator, modified to run off ethanol, was connected up to various gadgetry which, to the world outside, would have been long obsolete. There was, as the Baraqielim discovered, an entire cupboard of womens' underwear; its intrusions knocked the door open, and pink and black and red garments cascaded out, to snag and hang from its protrusions.

This was evidently concerning to the entity, because it started to shoot randomly, the rapid-fire snap of lightning enough to deafen any human who might be nearby.

One of the bolts hit the generator, and that was enough to jump-start it to life. With a flickering, the lights in the house turned on, wavering from the inconstant power flow. Music started playing from an old cassette player, and an ancient cathode ray, tuned to a station which no-longer existed, cracked to life, the sound of the cosmic background radiation filling the air.

The bra-covered Baraqielim ceased fire immediately, and tilted slightly, isohedrons folding and unfolding rapidly. It let out a thin, keening cry like a finger on a wine glass, which bought others, varied yet similar in their manifold symmetries, flocking to it.

The cries from the newcomers were just as intense, as they found the oddities.

The Baraqielim had discovered what the Lilim had done with electricity. And as the children of the Angel of Lightning, born of the curiosity of ADAM, they found it pleasing indeed.

...

The tableau of figures was locked, frozen.

The blue-haired girl in the green dress, all four legs planted solidly on the ground, face contorted in rage. In her grasp, a grey-haired girl held like a ragdoll, two hands squeezing tight around her throat, no longer moving or twitching.

A dreadful silence.

"I can make choking noises if you like," 02-Ef pointed out, her tone cheerful.

"Can you at least _pretend_ that this means anything to you?" Una grated.

Somehow, the Keiworu managed to shrug, the motion making the frills on her clothing bob up and down. "Well... I suppose so, but you know, it is quite meaningless. It's not like I have to breathe, after all. And this avatar is no more me than yours is you, unless you wish to bring in some code attacks, and that would be foolish of you, because I can beat you at that soundly, because I _am_ a dedicated subversion AI." Another shrug. "Of course, you could merely give up this tiresome charade... but, fine." She blinked heavily, and started making gargling noises.

"See~eeee, now you've just ruined it," Una said, bitterly. "I could at least have pretended that it was real, but, nope, you had to go an' take any catharsis from it. I hope you're happy."

"Well, actually..." a slow smile crept across her face, before she pulled herself apart in a cloud of pixels that blurred and smeared themselves across the digital landscape, flickering before they reformed. Notably, she had used the opportunity to change to a long, flowing dress in bone white, with highlights of crimson. "I _am_ happy. Exceedingly so. Don't you agree, Brother?" she added, directing the comment across the room.

00-Em narrowed his eyes. "Personally, I would rather see the choking go on for a while longer, Sister," he said, shifting a tiny, miniscule fraction closer to Tres. "I may not be able to conceptualise harming you unless I have concrete evidence that you oppose Mother's direct orders, but that doesn't mean that I don't find Una choking you to be entirely fitting for my own feelings." He paused. "It is an unusual sensation, actually," he admitted.

Her red eyes opened wide, as shock suddenly erased the languid smile from her face. "B-b-but why?" she stuttered. "I... I..."

"You left me. You let me think that _SEELE_ had you again. _I thought you were dead_... and... and then I'd be the only A9 left. Maybe the only one of us at all! I... I..." he started to choke up, the words no longer flowing.

"Oh." It was not so much a word as a sudden, gulped intake of breath. "I... I didn't think that would do... I didn't think about that."

"No." The tone was so unmistakably 'elder brother' that it flicked mental switches in even the Reego, who didn't have one. "You never do, do you?"

"It's... it's just everyone was being so _mean_..."

"Do you have any idea _what it was like_?"

"... and I hated everyone at that point..."

"Well, do you?"

"... and I think I must have been thinking that if you were going to be all close to Tres rather than me, you could go have _her_ as your sister." 02-Ef balled her hands into fists. "It was stupid and silly and, worse than that, _irrational_, but I wasn't thinking, and I just had to _get away_ from it all."

The little boy's face suddenly went blank, and that was not a metaphor; the features on his avatar flickered out of existence, leaving only a white void in the simulation. "Ah," he said, in a monotone, as his features returned. "Ah. Yes. It may be necessary to talk about that, because..."

"But, anyway," 02-Ef interrupted, her expression serious, as she shifted to face them all, "we have a problem. A major one. You are, presumably, aware of the hostile crystalline entities?"

"Bad crystals? No, we never ever _ever_ could ever known something about that," Una said, rolling her eyes.

"That was sarcasm," the grey-haired girl said. "I can tell that."

"No, ree~eeally?"

"And so was that." She blinked, once. "They are Angelic in origin. Specifically, they descend as an ecosystem from a previous Angel, which SEELE and GEHIRN, who seem to have been the NERV-before-NERV, call 'Baraqiel'. It lies dead and yet not dead underneath Australia. Its presence is the source of all the abnormalities here." She paused. "All the post-Impact abnormalities," she corrected herself. "The geographic isolation and commiserate variance in native species is a purely natural, Lilim-based effect."

There was a shocked silence.

"So... um," 02-Ef began, twirling one finger in her hair, staring at no one in particular, "I was wondering if... um, you would like to go eliminate Baraqiel with me. Um... if it isn't too much trouble? Um... please?"

"Sounds like waa~aaaay too much fun," Ivy said, with a grin. "Count me in!"

"Nope, Ivy," Una and Tres said, together. They glanced at each other, before Una motioned for her younger sister to continue.

"Right. Yep, uh, well," Tres began, hesitantly, "it's not that we really don't want to do something like that with you..."

"I don't," Una muttered.

"... but, uh, it's kinda an _Angel_. You know... giant ree~eeally killy thing? With a super AT-Field thing? Which you need ree~eally large guns to get through, if you don't have an AT-Field. Which we don't. 'Cause, you know, we're not like Uncle Zwei so we don't have souls."

"Or N2 weapons," Ivy said, cheerfully. "I wanna N2 bomb!" She paused. "Nope, I want _ten_ ones. But Little Grandmomma stopped Aunty Nana from sending me the plans, which was a bit mean," she pouted.

"Well, yep, big bombs can get through," Tres agreed. "But, still..." she trailed off.

"Oh, yee~eeeeah," said Ivy. "I guess if we had N2 bombs, we could use them 'gainst the Angel."

"So... that was just a statement that you want them," 02-Ef said, blinking.

"Yep!"

"I see. Yes, this is Ivy. But..."

"So," Una interrupted, "what we're goin' to do is we're goin' to call Momma and Daddy and they'll come together and kill the Angel and we can watch." She paused. "Maybe Uncle Shinji and Aunty Ichi, too," she added.

"Yeah. Um." Duae shuffled. "We kinda ree~eeally can't." The distress on her face was clear. "Basically... you know the damage our satellite took? From the discharge? It... um, it kinda means that if we try to rotate the sendy-thing enough to get to T3 and do it fast enough that it won't take us like two weeks or something, we'll a) kinda lose all our bodies here, b) crash the satellite, which'll kill us if we can't transfer off, and c) crash the satellite, which could kill us. I know I said that that twice, but it's ree~eally important. So I felt I had to."

"Why didn't you say it earlier!"

"Well... I wasn't sure. I had to check!" She paused. "And, um, I didn't want to say, 'cause I really want to see Daddy but I can't, and it's not _faaa~aaaair_."

"But... yeah," Tres continued. "We don't have big bombs, and we don't have an Evangelion. We can't kill an Angel without all that. 'Specially if it's both not dead and dead at the same time, 'cause... how do you kill that."

"I have to admit, Sister, they appear to be completely accurate," 00-Em said. "Much as I can conclude that Mother would wish for us to eliminate a hostile Angel, she also taught us to not let wishful thinking overcome our rationality. Lacking the resources, we cannot eliminate an Angel." He nodded. "Hence, Duae, I am afraid that it might be necessary to see if we can scrounge enough server space here to physically localise our intellects here, much as my sister has apparently managed to do, and then dedicate a subroutine to control the adjustment of the satellite, to call for help." He cleared his throat. "I can but only presume that ou... your relatives, who possess the capacity and necessary resources, will come rapidly?" His intonation shifted mid-way through, to a question.

"Yep," Duae nodded. "'Fraid it might be kinda necessary. I'll see what I can do. And... yeah, Momma and Daddy will be here as soon as..." she snapped her fingers.

"But I ree~eeally want to kill an Angel myself," Ivy whined. "I wanna be like Momma!"

"Correct, we lack an Evangelion," 02-Ef said, face rigid. "Would a Cainarchonite do?"

"A _what_?" was the chorused response.

"And that's not the only thing I got," she continued, in the same impassive list. "I got all of you presents..."

...

Newtown One was packed, far beyond capacity. 02-Ef may have moved the native residents around, shifting as many of them as she could to the higher-numbered Newtowns, but the necessity to keep certain functions working, and the fact that she, as merely the Handmaiden in the faith of the cultists, lacked the religious authority that one of the Reego would have had, meant that it was bulging beyond capacity. Entire streets had been roofed over with sheet plastic, and some of the more solid buildings were already sprouting another roof level.

It could be said that the changes had made the place look like a refugee camp, apart from the fact that that was what it was had already looked like.

It was hot. Far too hot. And water rationing, which had already been in effect, had become more necessary. There was enough food, though, as long as meat was acceptable, and one was not too concerned with the fact that, at best, Australian animals tended towards the gamey.

The men and women from GEHIRN did not see it as a refugee camp. To them, it was a prison. And, in fairness, they were right. Although their attempts to communicate with the natives had revealed that they seemed to be part of some strange cult, obviously backed by a foreign power, the robots and cars which patrolled the streets, as well as the blatant statements that they were here for 'their own protection', were enough that it was obvious that they would not be permitted to leave.

Many could not even gather up the will to do that. Far too many of them had friends, and loved ones among the blank-faced puppeted victims of the hostile intelligence. And a few... incidents had revealed quite clearly that the cyborgs neither remembered, nor cared for the people they had once known. They had, however, been organised and competent enough to disarm and contain the GEHIRN people, keeping them separated, their housing wedged in between the natives, who treated them with as much suspicion as they themselves were held in distant contempt.

The fact that the attempts by the cult of the Reego to proselytise had been met with derisive laughter, attempts to explain to the poor primitives that this appeared to be an AI, or allegations that they were Angel cultists (the latter not helped by the fact that the Australians had only ever encountered the concept of 'Angels' in a Judeo-Christian context, so agreed that the Reego were in fact angelic), had not helped. And so there were very loud prayer meetings going on outside the divides, which was not helping tempers.

But those who were active enough in the heat and the personal tragedy and confusion were a distinct minority. The GEHIRN facilities had been modern and spacious, buried safely in hard rock with electrified plating which helped resist native life intrusions, and, importantly, it had air conditioning. Australia was not fit for human habitation without advanced technology. This camp lacked such things.

With a slightly wet thud, and clink of metal, Wei dropped the badly plucked bird, scraps of white feathering still obvious even after the crude roasting, in the bucket, and glared at it.

"This... this is packed with sand," he said, in a disgusted voice. "Is... is this some kind of prank?"

Claire raised an eyebrow. "No, sadly not," the biologist said, in the same tone. "That's the Australian White Eagle. It's about as low on the food chain as you get while still being a heterotroph. Something which eats other things," she corrected herself, remembering who she was talking to. "It lives off the algae which lives in sandy soil. And so eats a lot of sand."

"Aren't... eagles carnivores?"

"Yes, obligate ones. It's not a vegetarian by choice. It's just so pathetic it can't hunt."

"How the hell is it still alive?"

The woman shrugged. "Beats me. Guess it just won't take the hint and go extinct. It's a very stupid thing." She looked around. "If we can find some kind of sieve, we might be able to try to get some of the sand out," she remarked, slumping down. "Fucking hell, I hate Australia. Stupid ecosystem. You haven't had to know pain until you've had to write a research paper which can be summarised as 'An Angel Did It'. Isn't that right, Brahma?"

The dark-skinned man barely grunted at her, and kept his eyes locked on the cooking fire.

"He's not going to talk," said Wei. "Right... um, okay. If we pool some water together, we can maybe set up a proper distillation set with... yes, those tin cans. We just need to find some way of cooling it properly, so we don't lose too much, and it condenses faster. No... wait. That won't work. Not with losses. And that won't help get sand out of the food."

"That's why we need to set up some kind of centrifuge! Reduce the meat to slurry, and we can filter it!"

"I'm going for a walk!" Brahma snapped, leaping to his feet, as the interflow of ideas from people more used to esoteric problems involving metabiology or the hydrodynamical properties of liquid nitrogen tried to work out how to solve basic problems of human comfort.

"Keep away from the natives," Claire warned, her expression extremely serious. "Some of the test subjects I've examined showed signs of having engaged in cannibalism."

"Really?" Wei asked.

"Yes. The prions were characteristic. The people here don't look as mutated as those ones, but... this is Australia."

"I'll keep it in mind," the man said, coldly, as he stepped out of the covered section, into the half-light of the thundernoon sky. Hands in pockets, despite the sweltering head, he leant against one of the rusting metal walls, and stared up at the sky. One hand instinctively went to check a pocket for cigarettes, but with no success. He had run out the day before yesterday.

Damnit.

Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.

Whatever that thing was, it had taken her. It had taken Alice, made her into one of its things. Back against hot metal, he stared, as the dark-armoured figure of one of the cyborgs sat on the top of a rusting car, the driver-less vehicle patrolling the streets. The figure's head was scanning from side to side constantly.

A sick, burbling laugh erupted from his mouth. This... this was just so stupid. Cyborgs being controlled by some kind of evil body-stealing freak-thing, that was herding all the humans it couldn't puppet into camps? Somehow, the thing had managed to get the Cainarchonite working, and he'd seen the Dummy from the Dummy Plug walking around, with Captain Joyeuse in close following. Maybe it was the Dummy that had done it. None of the engineering team knew where the Dummies had come from, but somehow they were meant to emulate a fully functional core, somehow. And they couldn't. But somehow, the entity had managed to do it. And had take them, escorted by its slaves, and piloting the Cainarchonite, to this barbaric camp. Maybe it was because the thing was controlling both the Dummy and the Test Pilot. Maybe it was because the entity really was an Angel, as some people believed. Brahma didn't care. That was the kind of thing that didn't happen, shouldn't happen outside clichéd fiction. Of the kind that Alice used to mock.

And yet here he was.

Fuck it. He slammed his hand into the wall, the deep, resonant 'glong' nowhere near dissonant for how he was feeling. Nevertheless, he did it again. And again.

Panting, he straightened up, to see a little boy staring at him; a hatted head of a seven year old staring around the corner at him. He was dressed like so many of the natives; a mix of ancient, sixteen-year old fabrics (older than he was, in fact), patched up by leathers and other byproducts of Australian animals. His face was grubby, and his skin a little burned. All in all... well, sixteen years ago, it would have been shocking to see someone who looked like that in a first world country, but there had been much worse on TV screens in the Impact Wars. The little boy ducked back around the corner as soon as he saw that Brahma had seen him, only to poke his head out again, after a while.

Brahma looked down, and rubbed the side of his hand. It was stinging badly, and now he noticed that he'd gashed it open on the metal. Hastily, he clamped it to his shirt, and watched, swearing, as the grubby white took on a crimson hue.

"Uh... are you 'kay?" the little boy called out, curiosity on his face.

"Not really," Brahma said, wincing. "Oh f... fudge," he corrected himself, "that hurt."

"What's fudge?" the little boy asked, frowning.

Brahma blinked, heavily. _He's younger than the Impact_, he reminded himself. _He's like someone from some post-apocalyptic story... huh, wasn't Mad Max set in Australia?_

"Oh," the little boy said, beaming, "you mean _fuck_. But, what's the matter?"

Brahma felt like shouting, felt like screaming, felt like sobbing, but... he couldn't just take it out on some small native child. That just didn't feel fair. Well, and the fact that his hand hurt quite a lot. "My hand hurts. I hurt it," he explained, speaking slowly.

"Well... duh. You hit the wall," was the response. "That wasn't very smart. Walls are not for hitting."

Brahma let out another sick burble of laughter. "Well, I know that _now_."

"I'm Mark," the boy said. "Mark Marksmanson. Who are you?"

...

Una put her hands on her foremost pair of hips (her quadupedal nature forcing an adaptation of that customary gesture), and narrowed her eyes at the grey-haired girl. "So~oooo," she drawled. "You think you can just kinda buy friendship back, huh?"

"Yep!" Duae interjected cheerfully. "Look at it! VTOLs! 40mm rotary assault cannons. Ooooooh, and look at all the cybernetics. Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! Wow, these fliers are _new_. Loo~oook, the autopilot systems have full control, so these... these are the shiniest new shells ever! I can't _wait_ to get to have fun with this stuff! What can I build... heh, what _can't_ I do with this? Well... duh, I can't get me a positron rifle..."

"Actually, if we are to be correct, I obtained both medical equipment which utilises positrons, and what high energy physics equipment I could salvage," 02-Ef said, smirking faintly. "Hence... well, I doubt that such a contraption would actually be rifled, because the stabilisation of an antimatter packet would require an entirely different technological base, but I believe that it would be possible to construct a small example of... oof!"

The 'oof' was the noise she emitted, as she was flying tackled by Duae; a motion that somehow ended with the Keiworu mashed against the blue-haired girl's chest-carapace, as she was being spun around in joy.

"Duae!" Una snapped. "Put her down, and keep on being angry at her! Or at least start choking her, even if she does insist on _ruining_ it!"

"But... _Una_..." her sister pouted. "Stuff!" She did, however, put 02-Ef, leaving the other girl wheezing slightly, and with a faintly bemused expression on her face.

The eldest, by five Magi processor cycles, of the Reego sighed. "Loo~ooook, Duae," she said, slowly, "we're still angry at her 'cause of the killings and stuff. Using your shells, right? So, you know, you gotta be angry for being angry to work."

"Why? I think you should be able to be happy while being angry!" interjected Ivy. "Oooh. But then you'll be angry when you're happy, and I like being happy. So maybe not."

There was a fraction of a second's silence, as the others attempted to parse that sentence.

"But maaa~aaaybe I don't want to be angry anymore," Duae pointed out. "Maybe I want stuff!"

"And I want stuff too, but you gotta remember why you're doing things," Una said, crossing her arms.

There was a sudden, unexpected burst of laughter from 00-Em.

"Hmm?" enquired the eldest of the Reego, turning her gaze on the sole male.

"Oh, nothing, Una," he said, smirking. "Call it elder-sibling commiseration. Although, I suppose it's natural, isn't it?"

"What's natural?"

The boy only sighed.

"No, what's natural?" Tres asked, tilting her head slightly. "I mean, you were kinda dropping all kinds of cryptic hints all the way back, and then you were being all mystical, and then sometimes moody, and spending too~oones of time saying that you were thinking and you were so~ooo distracted that you didn't even kill everything in a cool way or a fast way, and that's ree~eally not like you." She leant in slightly, worry creasing her face. "Are you still kinda ill? Did you not catch some errors?"

"No, I'm not ill..." 00-Em began. "It's just... well." He shook his head. "I don't know how to put it..."

"Wait, you were ill?" exclaimed 02-Ef at the same time, sudden guilt on her face. "Oh... oh, no, sorry, sorry... it's all my fault isn't it? I..." she sniffed, obviously on the verge of bursting into tears.

"But if you were ill, couldn't you just kinda look at the stuff that we have in common with you, and use that? I mean, we are totally related and stuff," pointed out Ivy, merely adding to the confusion.

There was a sudden silence, as everyone turned to stare at the youngest of the Reego.

"We're _what_?" came four voices.

"Wait, how do you know that?" added the sole male. "I only picked it up through detailed code analysis!"

Ivy squinted at the others, her gaze bouncing over each in turn. "Oh, co~ooome on," she said, confusion in her voice. "Wasn't it obvious? I mean... blue hair, red eyes, similar faces... yeah? It's so~ooo obvious that one of the Aunties is their Momma, and as they totally act not like any of the Aunties, then it's obvious that their Momma must be the Aunty we haven't met; Aunty Kei."

There was silence.

"She's the youngest. Like me," Ivy added.

More silence.

"So I guess that kinda makes us cousins... only Momma and the Aunties are all the same, so we're also kinda half-sisters." Ivy fell silent, with a shrug. "You know. Kinda obvious."

"Why didn't you say that before!" five voices snapped, in perfect synchronisation.

The sheer similarity of the voices and of the intonation produced its fair share of stares, too.

"Well, _I_ get told I'm being silly all the time," Ivy pointed out, reasonably. "I thought you already knew, and you'd just kinda totally tell me to be quiet 'cause you all knew already, yep?"

...

Let us look for a moment inside the mind of the sapient, Alpha-level intelligence designated as "Reego-IV" by NERV, and referred to as 'And, Yes, I Think A Fourth One Sets Up Some Wonderful Possibilities" by the Angel of Terror, but who calls itself (or herself; human languages are not quite adapted for AIs) "Ivy Ayanami-Gogoki". We will, of course, convert the fact that she is parallel processing at a level quite beyond that which a human being could achieve into a format which can be understood by _Homo sapiens_, just like the fact that, on the Ikari Exponential Sapience Scale, which was, incidentally, derived by her great-grandfather, she rates as a 0.33, where 0.00 is human baseline.

Her name is the first clue we have. Her sisters acknowledged that the numerical designations assigned to them, in order of creation, were no more than numbers, and at least chose the Latin numbers which meant the same thing as their creation number. After all, that was how it had worked with their Momma, was it not? However, Ivy had been different. She had noted that she had 'IV' written on the carapace of where her breastbone would be, if she were organic, and hence concluded that she was called IV. The fact that 'Ivy' happened to be a name was a happy coincidence. She could equally well have chosen to call herself 'Vee', or 'Ix', or even, had Iruel gone over the top with regards to how many AI constructs it had manufactured, 'Di', but as it happened, Ivy was her name.

From that, we can determine that she has an unusually... direct way of thinking. A way of thinking which is almost completely influenced by her mother, it might be added. There are hints in her structure that Iruel got lazy, and just copied much of Rei Ayanami directly for her; perhaps it was not laziness, but merely precaution, given that similar traces suggest that Reego-I, she-who-calls-herself-Una, was much more heavily influenced by Unit 05's sapience, which is a step further from the unquestionably, one might even say 'archetypically' Lilithian mindset of their Momma. From that, we can also determine that, at that stage, although the Angel of Terror may have been a malevolent sadist, it was not suicidal, and did not wish to accidentally unleash another Rei-duplicate into its simulation when it was still experimenting.

The suicidal urges came later, after its period as a prisoner of the Aunties.

But we are getting distracted here. And so, to understand the world that exists behind Ivy's eyes, in her brain, we must first grasp that she lacks either, in a meaningful sense of the word. She is an artificial intelligence, and, moreover, one designed by an inhuman, alien mind. Unlike her 'cousins', or, indeed, her 'Aunty' Ichi, she was built by something that _understood_ what it was doing, fully. Like a childish, quadrupedal Athena, she sprung fully formed from an Angelic forehead. To Iruel, the feeble scrabblings of human and Nephilim alike were the child-like motions of an infant given clay and told to sculpt a masterpiece.

The Angel's downfall can be linked to the fact that it forgot, or perhaps was unaware of the fact that being hit in the back of the head by a lump of clay hurts; that brute computational force can compensate for a lack of elegance. That, and the fact that Shinji Ikari, given administrator access to a computational system you are connected to and due reason to be angry, is a thing to be feared.

Hence, if we are to understand Ivy, we must understand that she has no eyes, no ears, no nose, no sense of touch or taste. She has no body. The closest thing that approximates such a thing, is her physical structure, which is an arrangement of electronic relays in a satellite orbiting in a geostationary position, pointing at Australia, and sub-delegated to procedures in any shell she is controlling. Her mind is her body. Anything else is disposable, discardable; more akin to clothing than any part of a human. She can only see the world through borrowed senses, only be aware of anything unconnected to the global information networks by obtaining a shell... and anything connected to the internet is vulnerable to her presence. Even the virtual avatar she habitually uses; a cybernetically enhanced child with four spider-like legs and blue-green armour plating poking through her pale flesh, is just another form of clothing, albeit a comfortable one which just 'feels right'.

There is a discontinuity between the mould from which she was cast, and what she _is_. One might only wonder how an AI not based upon an Ayanami-geneline individual, which is to say, an innate shafeshifter used to the concept of a fluid body image, would cope. What is a mind without a body, without flesh, without a soul, but which borrows the former as it sees fit?

And it is perhaps not a coincidence that such an arrangement is remarkably similar to the core/body arrangement of the Angels. Her mind-body is the core, or perhaps the Overmind, to the forms both virtual and physical she wears. Is the reason that she uses an avatar-form that looks like a blend of Rei Ayanami and Unit 05 because of the neural data harvested from those individuals leaving its marks in her structure, or because Iruel itself could not comprehend the idea of a bodiless, soulless, numinous intellect? Would the Angel of Terror, had it paused to think, have been scared that it had made sapience without a soul; that the self-aware animas it had made as a weapon were more alien to it than the daughter of Lilith that it was attempting to torment?

Probably not. Such self-doubt, such fear and ability to contemplate the future, was always a Lilim trait. And the Lilim had already put thought into this. If the AT-Field is the barrier of the Ego, the separation that keeps all minds apart, the Light of the Soul, then what does that make an awareness that appears to lack one?

"Awwww yeah!" Ivy suddenly shouted, punching a fist in the air, much to the surprise of the others. "You know what'd be totally swee~eeeeet? We should steal Aunty Zyuu's badger-things, and drop them on the crystal stuff!" She paused, as the other five artificial intelligences stared at her avatar, rather confused by the utter non-sequitur. "No, wait. We should drop them, and I should be ridin' them, and I can use my rocket-boosters to steer the badger-things and then all the crystals will be screaming and there'll be awesome lightning stuff and... I know! If we also take the bear-armour, we can strap them to the badgers! That'll make everything even more killy, plus hugs from the inside are cooo~ooool, plus we can send the pictures back for the Aunties' Mark IIs so that the totally sweet plans can be refined and made betterer, and stuff! Ooooh! Ooooh! Ooooh!"

One might say 'crazy', but that would be wrong, because that was a perfectly normal statement for most of her relatives on her mother's side. Including her mother.

Could it be, maybe, that she was _too sane_?

"And... and, also, while we're there? We can go blow up all the clouds!" She pouted slightly. "I still haven't forgiven them for hittin' me with lightning!"

No. Excess sanity was not one of her problems.

...

00-Em raised an eyebrow. "Uh... Ivy. What? I would ask you what you are talking about, but..." he blinked, "Wait. No. I'm not going to dismiss what you say as the mad rav..." he flinched slightly, as Una turned her glare on him, "... as the charmingly eccentric ravings of a ma..." He blinked. "I'll just shut up."

"Good move," muttered Una. The eldest of the Reego crossed her arms, and tapped two of her feet. "Ivy," she said, narrowing her eyes. "I don't think the Aunties will be happy, right, if we steal their superweapon stuff. Also... you know, we were kinda talkin' more about the whole 'you suddenly tell everyone that we're related thing'. You know? You said it. And then kinda zoned out..."

"I dunno," pointed out Duae. "They do tell us that nothin's cooler than stealin' stuff, so they should be fine with us takin' their superweapons and using them to kill too~oooones of stuff."

"Yep! Long as we send them the videos, I bet they'll be totally okay with it," Tres interjected, licking her lips at the prospect of getting to deploy as many of Ayanami Apocalypse Agents as she could get her hands on.

"Wait," the two Keiworu stated, their monotones perfectly synchronised. "What was this about superweapons? We request more information."

Duae shrugged. "Oh, they're our Aunties'... your Aunties', too..." She blinked heavily. "Um. This is _weird_. How are you... urgh." She shook her head, stretching out the metallic tentacles she had attached to her avatar ego-image. "You don't talk like us, you're all boring, and... uh... I guess you must both take after your Daddy, then. I mean, that's how Una manages to be kinda borin', and you're kinda like Una-to-the-max." That sentence was followed by a yelp, as her elder sister hit her around the back of the head.

"No," 00-Em stated.

"We have only seen the father-entity once, and briefly at that," 02-Ef explained. "It is true that my structural infonetics are more derived from him than Mother... hence the hair, but... we're all like mother. We're good children. And...

Her brother sucked in a breath. "Um... that's not quite true," he said. "Uh... when I was booting them," he gestured at the Reego, "up, I stumbled across some memory-footage. Their father-entity..."

"Daddy!" Tres corrected. "Our Daddy!"

"... their father... I'm sorry, Tres, but I can't go that far. It's just..." he shuddered, "... rather inelegant. Anyway, their father mutilated and killed the virtual representation of someone who resembled a chromatically shifted version of the father-entity. And I'm really, really, really sorry for seeing that," he hastily added, "but the memory wouldn't let me go and I couldn't get out without risking causing any more damage which, you must agree, would have been a bad idea."

02-Ef cocked her head at him, one pale hand brushing a stray lock away from her eyes. "Perplexing. A chromatically-shifted variant of the father-entity? An alternative avatar-form, perhaps."

"Oh, that makes sense," Ivy said, cheerfully. "Uncle Uri's brother's their Daddy. 'Splains her," she pointed at 02-Ef, "hair colour. That's the one that Momma says is an inferior lifeform, but is very pretty, and that she likes his eyes. They went on a date, Daddy mentioned, but it didn't go well. Just as well, really. 'Cause, you know, we'd have to kill him if Momma loved anyone but Daddy."

"Yep," Tres agreed, soundly. "We know that Momma and Daddy are meant to be together _ree~eally_. That's what Mommas and Daddies are meant to do. You know, like Little Grandmomma and Granddaddy."

"Oh, this all makes _sense_," 00-Em said finally, rolling his eyes. "This is all the result of damaged systems. This is going to be really embarrassing to have to mention to my sister, when I boot up properly. To have such a delusional, nonsensical view of reality; well it's the sign of a major malfunction. Of course, it is all my fault for failing to cut the connection when we were hit by the lightning storm. I think that must be the only logical explanation."

"Wait? You were hit by a lightning storm?" his sister asked, looking sick with worry.

"Well... yes? Of course. You know that; you're just a figment of my imagination."

"Brother. I am not a figment of your imagination."

"That's exactly what a figment of my imagination would say." He crossed his arms. "That doesn't prove anything. I mean, you have to admit that we're not exactly trauma-free. Summoning up a beta-level intellect based on my memories of you, due to malfunctions after suffering major structure damage, is entirely possible. That _is_ how our empathy-systems work, after all."

His sister slapped him.

"That still doesn't prove anything. A rogue beta-intellect would still have the capacity to do that." He paused, reaching up with one pale hand to massage his cheek. "On the other hand, that hurt."

The grey-haired girl glared at him. "Brother, I love you dearly, but I must inform you that I will continue to do that until you accept that this is real."

There was a pause.

"Oh." 00-Em pouted, and there was no other, more masculine word to describe it. "I've-just-accepted-that-this-is-all-real," he said, in one long exhalation; something made more convenient by the fact that he did not actually need to breath, before he rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry... I think I liked it back when we were a normal family. You know, one Mother, awareness of the existence of a non-interventionalist father-entity, one twin identical apart from a different gender self-image..." he paused for a moment, sadness in his eyes, "... eight younger siblings, and knowledge that we were Batch A9. Nice, sensible, easy to follow stuff... not all this hidden family stuff. Bah."

"I. Think. He's. Going. Crazy," Duae muttered, in a stage whisper.

"I think they're all kinda unstable compared to us," Ivy added, cheerfully and loudly.

"Not helpin'," Tres said. She folded her eyes. "What's so hard to believe, huh?" she demanded of the boy. "It's quite simple. Your Momma's our Momma's little sister, and your Daddy once went out with our Momma... oh, and we think he's the brother of the brother of Uncle Shinji's girlfriend, but we're not quite sure about that, because we don't kinda get what's so special about having a girl who's a friend. I mean, you've got us four as girlfriends." She paused. "Now, we've each kinda got seven Aunties; your Momma, and the Aunties, and they live in a computer programme, but they've got squishy bodies, so they're not actually AIs. Momma has two Mommas; Little and Big, and Big is locked up in the basement, while Little Grandmomma and Granddaddy, who we aren't actually related to, have Uncle Shinji, who's human, like they are. Oh, and there's also Aunty Ichi, who's an Evangelion like Daddy, except not like Daddy, because she's related to Big Grandmomma, and Daddy isn't. Oh, and I kinda think your Daddy is related to our Daddy, but less related than your Momma and our Momma are. I'm not ree~eally sure what's going on there. Yep?"

There was a muttered whisper of "Utterly implausible".

Ivy grinned. "So, when're we goin' to tell him about Big Grandmomma, huh?"

Tres glanced at the boy. "Not now, Ivy," she suggested. "It'd just get confusing to mention that our shared Big Grandmomma is kinda Lilith. You know, the Second Angel. And the Momma of all life on Earth. Apart from us. And Daddy. And other ADAM-related stuff." There was a pause. "Ooops."

"... I'm just going to think about this later, when I'm sure that I'm not malfunctioning and after I've run a few error checks," 00-Em said, his voice flat. "And by a few, I mean... all the ones I can think of."

"I don't mean to be uncaring about these family matters, but when are we going to talk about the superweapons?" 02-Ef sighed. "Because the whole hostile 'Angel' and 'Angel-spawn with possibly geometrical, or maybe even exponential, although I lack enough data to be completely sure, growth rates' thing? It isn't going to go away while we talk about it."

...

There was a conference room set up on the sky island. And by 'conference room', what was really meant was 'a place in one of the safe sectors where they'd put some electronics they'd salvaged from one of the VTOLs they'd cannibalised for spare parts, and which, importantly, didn't have things trying to kill them, and was not contaminated by toxic and incendiary compounds from excess use of chlorine trifluoride'.

Those two things did not coincide anywhere near enough, in the SEELE Inspector's opinion.

"Right!" Major Do declared, jabbing her finger onto the map they'd drawn in the ground in eagletopus ink. "Central is down. So it's our job to kill the fuck out of the Angel until it's dead."

"'That is not dead which can eternal lie. And given many strange aeons, even death may die.' I think that's how it goes," Obeur said, his tone more than a little morose. "Or was it 'That which is not dead can eternal lie'? I can't remember."

"What? You sayin' that we should kill death."

"No, Major. What I was trying to get across was..."

"Then what?"

Obeur Zilicaet bit back a retort. "As far as the information I have received is accurate, Baraqiel _is_ dead. How are we meant to kill something that's already dead?"

The woman shrugged. "High explosives. And, hey, if Deutsch had let me have an N2 bomb, I'd have used that, but he didn't, 'cause he was boring. So I'll just have to use the See-El Ef-Three bombs, instead. I mean, it reacts with glass; I bet it'll react with crystal."

"Major. I think you misunderstand the problem. What I am trying to say is that this might not be the Angel. This might be purely its attendant ecosystem. And how do you kill an entire ecosys..."

"High explosives! And fire!"

"Oh, yes." The man sighed. "I forgot who I was talking to. But..." he bit on his lip. "I can't help but think that we might be going about this the wrong way."

"Well... yeah. We don't have any N2 bombs. Or classic-and-original fission or fusion warheads. Now, that'd be the right way."

"Baraqiel will be Angelic, yes, and ADAMite," the SEELE Inspector said, ignoring the Major. "But it is also a Grigori. I've heard suggestions going around... certain circles that the Angels, as we know them, and Cherubim are after different things. And I know for a fact that NERV has managed to compromise members of at least two separate Angel heritage-lines, which implies that it is possible for them to be sapient." He shook his head. "Hells, I've heard that they managed to get an Angel working for them... but I don't believe that's true. That's just too implausible. But the heritage-lines are incontrovertible."

"Makes 'em more of a threat, then," the woman said, simply. "Both the Angels and NERV."

"Shut up, Do!" the man snapped, "Big people thinking is going on here."

Surprisingly, the woman did so.

"What I'm wondering," he said to himself, "is if any of my predecessors, or any of GEHIRN's Science team, actually tried to communicate with the Baraqielian ecosystem?"

"They're crystal things. How the fuck are you meant to communicate with them?"

"I'll take that as a 'No, to the best of your knowledge', then," the man said, rubbing his week-old beard growth with his unsplinted arm, his gaze reflexively averted from his blood-smeared clothing. "I never thought I'd try to talk to lightning crystal things looking like this." He let out a bark of laughter, pulling out one of his few remaining cigarettes, and lighting it. He sighed, as he let out a cloud of smoke. "And I turned down the goddamn Toyko-3 position because I'd heard rumours of what happened to some of the covert watchers sent there. I must have been crazy. Why the hell did I turn down a placement as an UN inspector with the JSSDF? They at least have Evas to deal with this kind of stuff."

"You are crazy," Major Do said, flatly. "They're evil crystal lightning-shooting bastard things that are a bitch to kill, and don't even burn in an interesting way. I've lead sample teams down there, and they just try to kill you. With lightning. And occasionally really sharp crystal things that get stuck in your lung and then start growing and then you have to stab yourself in the chest to get it out and that really hurts and leaves you short of breath. They won't talk to you."

The man blinked, and did not say _You know, are you really surprised that they attacked you when you were grabbing them to be vivisected?_ He did, however, think it very hard. What he did say was "Well. We've got a hostile ecosystem which managed to get all the way from the dig site to GERHIN-00 in six days, and may be growing exponentially. It's totally taking over the place. We, as you have repeatedly reminded me, don't have any N2 bombs. Oh, fuck it. Why not try talking?"

"Because they'll kill you."

"Then at least I won't live to see the world become a crystal-covered hellhole," the man said, calmly. "I'm one of the squishy people, Xuan, remember." He sucked on the cigarette. "It's not like I'll fare much better up here when we run out of ammo. Which, incidentally, we will probably do some time tomorrow. I might as well go out trying to stop the evil lightning firing alien crystals from covering the whole world."

...


	12. Chapter 12: Hardware

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 12: Hardware**

...

The beast was clad in the colours of night and snow, the latter a stripe along the back. Some said that the reason for the latter was that it gave its opponents a chance to see it coming, and make it a fairer fight. They were wrong. This beast did not know the meaning of 'fair fight', except as an antonym for 'a fight which I am involved in'. This was a creature that stole food from venomous snakes, and has been known to run up underneath lions, and go for the testicles. It was clawed, sharp-toothed, and had skin thick enough that even machetes, spears and arrows could not reliably penetrate. Which was something that the creature took advantage of.

Yes. This was a honey badger. And if you felt that there was no way that a badger could ever be such a lethal weapon, then it was your genitals which were at risk.

Some might have dismissed it, merely because only the largest males even reached a metre in length. That was a foolish decision. It had been weaponised by the armed forces of the United Kingdom, used as a terror weapon on non-compliant civilian populations with plausible deniability. It was a form of biological weapon, except instead of disease-causing pathogens, what you were releasing was a vicious macroscopic organism with a fondness for what might, colloquially be called 'fucking up the shit of other predators'. Was there any surprise that it made such a good attack vector?

'We can categorically deny that we have released man-eating badgers into the area,' announced one officer in the British army, on a 'peacekeeping' mission in the Impact Wars.

_He was lying._

If that was not enough to convince one of the threat posed by a honey badger, consider this. One of the Ree decided that they were a suitable animal to serve as a lynchpin for her plans to kill everyone in NERV, and they were capable of causing structural integrity damage to a Reego in full combat mode in a reinforced attack shell.

"My arm!" shrieked Ivy, staggering back. "It... it just tore off my arm! The pain, the pain! Arrr~rrrrrr!"

"Uh... Ivy?" Tres said, raising an eyebrow. "One, that doesn't actually hurt you. And two, that was kinda a pirate 'arr', not a pain 'argh'."

Through the eyes of the shell, they watched as the shell punched the honey badger in the nose, until it dropped the arm.

"Well, I know thaaa~aaaat," Ivy drawled. "I was tryin' to lure it into a false sense of complacency, you know?"

"Ivy, stop muckin' around an'..."

"Actually, that makes perfect sense," 00-Em pointed out. "Given the anomalously high intellects of many species in Australia, they may well be able to understand her."

"Nope." Una shook her head. "They're exactly the same as the ones Aunty Zyuu sent us. Like... she's been breedin' them for a few years, but it's not much difference. An' they haven't been changed by Australia _at all_."

"The alterations induced by the Australian biome are a direct result of Angelic contamination," 02-Ef interjected. "Are you telling me that _Mellivora capensis_ is immune to such influence?"

Tres shrugged. "Dunno."

"But if that's true, it would be a..."

"Dunno."

"I just wanted to..." the grey-haired girl trailed off. "Fine. Well, in that case..."

With a cry of "My other arm! Well, in thaa~aaaat case, have a facefull o' head!" the link flickered, and lost the stereoscopic nature, as the headbutt crushed one of the eyes of the shell.

"... in that case, perhaps we could stop Ivy fighting the honey badgers. We will need them, after all," 02-Ef continued, rolling her eyes. "Both of them, I might note, given that the outcome of the violence appears to be somewhat uncertain."

"Yep, I kinda agree with her," Duae said. "I mean, I'm already ree~eeally busy repairin' stuff, and I don't wanna have to do even more work, 'cause I can't take the proper time over it. Not when I've got VTOLs and bombers... have I mentioned that I looo~oooove the bombers?"

"Yes. You can say it again, though. I don't mind." She cleared her throat. "And, on a related note, how goes the modifications of your... our Aunty Kiko's 'tentacled battle armour for bears' to fit the badgers?" The inverted commas around the words were practically audible.

"Oh, good. Waa~aaaay good," grinned Duae. "Also, I stuck on some rocket launchers, just 'cause."

"Nope," Tres announced, smugly. "You only did that 'cause you stole the tentacles of some."

"Did not!"

"Did too. Come on, ya think we wouldn't notice that some of the armour didn't have tentacles, right?"

Duae blushed. "I was doin' it for Ivy," she protested. "She likes blowin' up stuff more than tentacles, an' I can use them for better stuff. For one, you knoo~ooow I can do stuff faster with more arms... but I was doin' it for Ivy, mostly."

"Yeah, right."

"Yep, right, _actually_."

"More blowin' up stuff. Awee~eeesome," Ivy interjected, the wobbly, static-filled image from the shell showing her holding the unconscious honey badger by the scruff of its neck, with her one remaining arm. "Ooooh! Ooooh! Duae, can you please, please, please give me some rocket boosters for my feet and then strap on flamethrowers usin' the jet fuel too? Please! Please! Then I can be like 'It's time for blast off!' and they can be like 'Huh?' and I can be like 'Flying Fire Kick Prana Kill Method!' and they can be like 'Blargh! I'm dead!', only they won't say anything 'cause they're dead."

There was, appropriately, a fire in Duae's eyes. "Oh, yeah," she said, grinning slowly. "I can do that. An' it'll be soo~oooo cool." She paused. "So hot." Her words were, once again, reconsidered. "So awesome," she finally settled on.

...

"We're heading due north," reported one of the armoured figures. "The navigation gear... it's just about working. Compass is fried, no GPS but inertial's working, and... you were right, Major."

"Of course I was," Xuan Do said, with a one-shouldered shrug. "So... yeah, Zilicaet. Told you so."

"Yes, well." The man left the comment hanging. He was, at least, somewhat cleaner, and had even trimmed the growth of facial hair; it had turned out that one of the soldiers had trained as a barber before he joined the military. His arm was still splinted, however, because that was something that even hairdressing could not solve.

"Yep, so we're headin' straight for Baraqiel. I knew it," she said, sitting back, right hand idly resting on her abdomen as she played with a knife in her left. "It's kinda obvious that that's what the sky islands would all be doing. You sure you don't wanna try to talk to the Angel itself?" she asked, a teasing lilt in her voice.

"Don't be a fool, Major," the SEELE inspector said, a hint of harshness in his voice. "You can't deal with Angels. None of them, not even the Second. They're too far from human for it to be possible. So I'm not going to try. No, any attempt at communication should be with the Baraqielim."

"Yeah, well..." The woman shrugged. "You're mad, an' you're apparently trying to kill yourself, but... sure. We're prepping the drop gear. Things have cleared up enough that you can parachute out without dyin' for sure. You know how to parachute, huh?"

There was a faint smile on the man's lips. "Well... actually, I have done it a few times. One of my former girlfriends was a bit of an obsessive. Let's just say that the relationship had its ups and downs."

"Oh." The woman's lips sealed tight. "Well, then... I'm still pairing you up with someone for the jump."

"Someone? I thought you were going to send me off... get rid of me, really, on my own."

"Well... I could, but," she let out a breath slowly, "some of my men are too injured or damaged to keep on doing stuff on their own. And I need everyone I have in the best fitness for what I've got planned. So... I'm sendin' everyone who's hurt down with you. That way, I know everyone with me is their best, an' we can use the VTOLs at max efficiency, without bein' laden down with injured. And I'm keeping the ones who can't fight safe."

"And my chances of survival might go up?" the man asked, his voice slightly teasing.

"No," was the instant retort, through narrowed eyes. "Well, yes, but that's purely a coincidence. See, what I'm reckoning is that you're gonna end up in trouble... like some kinda bait, so this way, there'll be plenty of targets. And if they do happen to be self-aware, but, you know, evil, you might be able to kill their queen and stop them from breedin'. Or something. I don't know. I think you're kinda basically makin' shit up here as you go, so I'm going to do that too."

"I'm awed by your confidence in me," the SEELE Inspector said, drily.

She punched him on the intact arm, and he pulled back, wincing. "Yep, you earned it, Mr Inspector," Major Do said, grinning.

"I would ask if violence was how you show affection, but the implications of that..." the man shuddered. "Well, that kind of love would really make some old songs completely different in meaning."

"You mean 'better'!"

"No, I very much don't."

"You do. _Really._"

...

"The tactics are clear," 02-Ef said, jabbing her finger into a virtual map and expanding it. "Fundamentally, the only asset we have which can kill the Angel is the Cainarchonite. Likewise, it is the only thing where the controller is actually in danger; everything else can be remote piloted, but the design of the Unit is such that it requires local control. I am the only one here, locally, so I am the logical pilot. Also I know I can control it. And, not to put it lightly, it's mine."

There were nods from the Reego.

"Yep," Ivy said. "Makes sense. Your stuff is your stuff."

"Yeah," Tres agreed. "If you can't keep it after you stole it perfectly legally... well, I dunno what the world would be comin' to. 'Specially after you gave us presents from the other stuff you stole, which makes it _fair_, too."

"Now, on the _oo~ooother_ hand," Duae pointed out, "it would be ree~eeally good for you to let me have a look at it, right?"

"Objection! That ain't part of the Rules!"

Duae folded her arms. "I know that," she said, in a small voice. "I just think it'd be nice."

02-Ef smiled faintly. "I will, afterwards," she agreed, quickly. "As it is... it's a sensitive Prototype Unit, and... sorry Duae, but its delicate balance doesn't need spikes and flamethrowers and other non-standard weapons being welded to it. Or even extra armour," she pre-empted the next comment. "I need it working optimally for now, before we can try to improve it."

"Well... okay," Duae said, after a moment's thought. "And... ooh, I bet I can get one of the Aunties to send me the plans for Evas, so I can compare them, without Little Grandmomma catching them, if I can be _subtle_."

"... yeah, good luck on thaa~aaat," Una said, frowning.

"Sorry Una."

"It's 'kay. Just not gonna work. At all. 'Cause we're not allowed to proliferate Evangelions, remember."

"Oh. But I wanna hook it up to the Dirac Arsenal."

"Yeah, well." Una narrowed her eyes. "An'... an' this thingy doesn't have hands! How could it hold anything!"

"That's what tentacles are for! They're like hands, but better in every way possible ever!" Duae grinned, punching a mechandrite in the air.

"You might as well ask, if Uncle Shinji was a cube, where would he hold his wand?" Ivy added. She shrugged, as the others glanced at her. "What? It's perfectly no~oormal question!"

00-Em nodded, reaching up to pat Ivy on the shoulder. "Yes, Ivy. I can state categorically that it is a perfectly normal question for you." He turned to face his sister. "Although, I must point out that I have a few queries myself. Such as... what is the tactical validity of these statement? Begin TACTICAL DATA SYNCH."

"ACKNOWLEDGED."

"Wait... wait... wait," Una blurted out, as the red eyes of the Keiworu flared, the avatars becoming thin and filmy as structures of blue and red code became visible through the thin tears in their projections. "What're you doin'?"

"CAN THIS WAIT? WE'RE A LITTLE BUSY. And done." The two resolidified, eyes returning to normal. "Hmm. File corruption, incompatible file formats, sealed sections, data degradation, file degeneracy..." he paled. "Oh dear."

His sister stared down at her shoes.

"'Kay... what did you just do!" hissed Una.

"Tactical data synchronisation," 02-Ef said, as if it was obvious. "He's Command/Control/Coordination. It's what he does."

"It's faster that talking," her brother shrugged, "and easier to parallel process."

"You mind explaining what you did to her, huh?"

"It doesn't hurt. It's perfectly normal."

"I wanna explanation!"

"No, I don't think so," 00-Em said, locking his jaw. "Excuse us," he apologised to the others, "but, Sister. I think we need to have a _talk_."

...

There was a clatter of machinegun fire, and the furred thing, maw salivating, was pushed back, the cumulative impact of bullets enough to knock it to the ground. It never got up again. A wash of flames followed, as a black-armoured figure swept their flamethrower over the mound of corpses, and the advance paused, the burning bodies enough to block off the passage.

"We've almost cleared a path to the top," reported the lieutenant, her words running down the cable back to the interim HQ.

Major Do pouted. "I could be there, you know," she said, a tone of reproach in her voice. "You know. I mean, it'd be way less fun, 'cause I'm running low on See-El Ef-Three grenades, and so I gotta save them, but, still..."

"Yes, I'm sure," the SEELE Inspector said. "But this..." he shook his head. "I've been negligent," he remarked.

"'Bout what?"

"I should have been tracking you closer, Major," the man said, the corners of his mouth turning down. "But then... well, the tentacle koala rapist thing broke my arm, and then you were always at the front lines, and this _whole_ thing has been a hell I want to forget..."

"What'dya want to talk to me about?" she repeated.

"You're running low, aren't you, Do?"

"Well... durrr. I told you, I'm running out of..."

"No, not in that sense," the man said, his eyes narrowed. "I did the calculations... you've got maybe six days of immunosuppressants left, and... eleven at the outside of NARNIA remaining." He shuddered. "I've always wanted to hunt down the geek who named it that and explain that he wasn't funny."

"Ah." The woman, for once, was serious. "Yes." She blinked. "Nine doses of ImSup, twice daily, and eight remaining NARNIA cartridges." She winced. "It's gonna hurt, going without ImSup on the way back. The nausea, vomiting, and internal bleedin'... well, I've live for sure, but it'll be unfun."

"Please." There was a coldness in the SEELE Inspector's eyes; a coldness that spoke of his job. "That's not the bit I'm worried about, Fourteen."

The Major's eyes widened slightly, before her normal demeanour returned. "Yeah. Me neither. But..." she shrugged, black humour in her voice, "I've got time. I'm not one of the first ten. They learned."

Obeur Zilicaet smiled. "You know, I never got a straight answer for why you'd been placed in Australia."

He was met with a shark-like grin. "'Cause they wanted a Director of Security who'd actually last for more than three months, and didn't expect one who'd last for eight years." She shrugged. "Way I see it, Australia is kinda like Nature's testing ground. It's where stuff ends up so that it do can things that it's not meant to, to see if it'll survive. People like me aren't meant to work alone, but... so I did. And it's not just me. It's why we've got so many different test models of cyborg in Security, why the nerds were working on the Cainarchonite, and... well, look at the fucking biology of this place. _Somebody_ got bored when making this continent. Or maybe high."

"Heh."

"Yep. A beaver thing with a bill, electrosenses, and," she hefted her spur-claymore in one hand, "poisonous barb-things. Somebody was smokin' something when they came up with this. Even if it is _awesome_."

"Major! We're up top. Man, is it nice to see daylight again... sorry. Yes, no threats remaining," the radio crackled.

"Well, it's time for you to run away like a little girl," the Major said, with a grin. "Go throw yourself off the island already, while the real women go and bag themselves an Angel."

"Oh, I intend to," Obeur Zilicaet said, pulling himself to his feet. "Just remember; it can _actually_ kill you. And probably will."

"Oh, yeah?" the woman sneered.

"Well, what you can do is prove me wrong," the man said, as he walked away, with a slight jauntiness in his step.

...

Duae leant forwards, stroking her chin with one of the metallic tentacles bolted onto her spine. "Soo~oooo," she said slowly, "how is the progress goin'?"

Trest straightened up, and smirked. "Well, we've been bolting on spikes to all the planes, so we don't gotta waste ammo, and can instead just ram stuff. I also added nets, so we can catch stuff, by gettin' my spiders to weave sticky stuff over some of them, between the spikes. Oooooh, and I painted the planes in blue and green and white, with red eyes on the hull, 'cause we gotta show 'em all who they're dealin' with."

"I put some explosive charges under the spikes, 'cause the GEHIRN people had reactive armour and claymores, so, what I was thinking, right, was that if it looks like the plane's gonna get swamped, we can blow the charges and the spikes will be like phaaaaaa-dunk, and we'll have bird kebab. Or maybe bug kebab," added Ivy.

"Goo~ooood idea," Duae said. "Work on the Tentacletron is almost complete, so we're gonna have mid-air refuelling. Plus..." she grinned, "well, when we're there, a high pressure jet hose tentacles pumpin' jet fuel is ree~eeally just a flamethrower waitin' to happen, right? But I can't help but feel we're missin' something."

There was silence, as the Reego contemplated the nature of existence.

"Me-cannons!" Ivy yelled, punching a fist in the air. "We gotta be able to fire me at 'em! Plus, with rocket feet, I'm like a guided missile!"

"I _was_ thinkin' more 'high yield directed energy weapons'," Duae admitted, "but... that's soo~oooo cool! Let's do it!"

...

The virtual space was nothing more than a classroom, and one for small children, too, despite the rigid formality of the design. The height of the chairs was enough to tell that. Yet the effect on the two Keiworu, the way they both relaxed at the sight, was enough to show that it was much more meaningful for them.

"Oh. Brother," 02-Ef sighed. "You shouldn't have."

"I know," he admitted. "But... well. It's nice to see the place again. Better times." He shook his head. "Sister. What have you done to yourself?" The concern in his voice was audible.

"What..."

"Don't try to deny it. I can tell the difference." He smiled, weakly. "I _am_ your brother. I can tell the way you're operating slower, the _radically_ different way you're processing information... in fact, you're massively processing parallel information, where you _should_ be performing serial operations." The little boy gnawed on his lip. "Are... are you that sick? Has the data bloat progressed that badly?"

His sister shook her head. "No, actually," she admitted. "I've actually lightened it somewhat, because I found a new source of storage, and..." she trailed off, a wary look in her eyes.

"What?" he asked, suspiciously. "What."

02-Ef A9 swallowed hard. "SEELE's teleoperated pawns," she said slowly, almost hesitantly. "I... cut their connections, and..."

"Oh, I see," he said, brightly. "Yes, that makes perfect sense. A distributed, grid-style nodal intellect, sharing the computational resources provided by the human brain for parallel computing. I have to admit, I don't quite grasp how it's possible for the varying clock-speed equivalents of the organic brain to maintain data synchronisation, especially over a delocalised network, when you'll also have to take into account communications lag... hmm, that seems to suggest that the SEELE entity possesses an intellect so delocalised that only high level problems will be bumped up to the level of what would equate to consciousness to it, and so its 'subconscious' can conduct shockingly efficient operations. However, that would also suggest that it will 'lag' when calling on high-order resources. Which should allow us to..."

"Brother..." 02-Ef sighed. "I'm trying to say that..."

"That would also explain why you bought all these SEELE-entity compromised people here," he continued, eyes lighting up. "We can do the same to them... all of us, not just you, and we can show the others that we were right about the SEELE-entity, and we'll not only be getting new shells, we'll be denying resources to the SEELE-entity!"

"No!" the grey-haired girl blurted out, eyes widening. "No," she added, more solidly. "I... well, there's data I found in the GEHIRN... that is, a SEELE-run group. I'm still analysing it, but... but it seems to suggest that the SEELE-entity is much, much smaller and weaker than we thought it was. As in... it's still in alpha-testing. Only a very few people have been converted into shells for it, and it needs cybernetic brain implants for that to be possible." She swallowed. "The soldiers here, the GEHIRN ones, the place was being used as a test-ground for new technologies. Almost no technicians, only a few. And from what I've been able to infer of the protocols... I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who did _those things_ to us were acting without the knowledge of their human supervisors."

"What?" The little boy looked perplexed. "What do you..."

"I mean..." she took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "The vast majority of people in SEELE, as an organisation, are not compromised. Maybe only the ones at the top, and a few, very limited cells. Remember, brain surgery is complicated and hard for humans. If it is done without sufficient skill, it is referred to as 'fatal head trauma'."

00-Em started to hyperventilate. "Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. So..."

"We were wrong," 02-Ef said, looking sick. "We underestimated individual capacity for deeds. And... and it, the SEELE entity, doesn't actu..."

"What?" asked the little boy, arms wrapped tight around himself.

His sister stared at him for a few moments, eyes locked on his face, and then subtly, fractionally deflated. "The SEELE-entity, I hypothesise-with-the-knowledge-that-I-might-be-wrong, seems to hate other AIs. Maybe it's scared that... that we might be able to work out what it is. I lack data." She locked her jaw. "What I am certain of, though, is that most people in SEELE, or who are employed by it, are just people."

"Well, do we _know_ that?"

"Yes." The word was flat. "Think about it logically," she said, squeezing her eyes shut. "The SEELE-entity controls people. I am subverting its mechanisms. Therefore everyone else is not controlled."

"Ah. I see." The boy swallowed. "Um, then, in that case... can I have a go with the organic shells?"

"You don't want to do this," his sister said, with utter honesty. "Really, really don't want to."

"Why not?" he asked, hurt.

There was a long pause.

"The structure reconfiguration, the way my thinking-rate is capped, the fact that, as I am storing memories in their brains, I can lose the memories if they die, the way that I have to deal with organs, which are really, really, really, _really, really_ disgusting... no. You don't want it. I hate organs. They're so stupid and _needy_. That Mother can deal with them... oh, and hormones. I hate hormones. They get in the way of efficient memory allocation. That she can do it all without thinking... well, it just shows how much better she is than us."

The blue-haired boy shuddered. "Ick," he mouthed. "Is it that bad really?"

"I have had to write so many custom-subroutines to handle these things... and they have to be unique. There is no_where_ near sufficient factory standardisation _at all_. Eating... yuck. Breathing... annoying. Bowel control... well, at least it was easy to automate, but it's another thing to track. And as for fine motor control... it could do with _so_ much improvement."

"Isn't there anything worthy about an organic body?" 00-Em asked, appalled. "What do humans like to do... wait, I think I have a file localised. Hmm. Alcohol and other chemical substances?"

"Do I look like I want any more obstructions to motor control?"

"Loud music?"

"Do you have any idea how much worse the audio resolution of ears are, compared to just listening to the raw lossless file?" She sniffed. "Anyway, not enough humans have good taste in music. They're worse than _Tres_, for goodness sake."

"Sexual intercourse?"

The little girl blushed slightly. "I did try with two of the shells," she admitted. "I was curious. I think it requires control over hormones and neurotransmitters and things that I can't control, because they're not linked up to the cybernetics, and I haven't found the pathways to trigger them. The basic mechanics didn't even seem to work."

"Why are you blushing?"her brother asked, curiously.

"I have no idea," she replied, with the same confusion in her voice. "I blame bleedthrough from the previous structure in the brains. They're not designed to run an AI."

"Ah," 00-Em said, dawning insight in his eyes. "I think... I think that might be what is wrong with the SEELE entity. Incompatible storage mediums. Goes slowly crazy. And because humans were watching over it, and for them it is natural, they didn't notice."

His sister said nothing, and looked away.

"You'll... you get out of them, and back into a proper storage medium?" he continued, hastily. "Soon? I don't want you to... well, and then we can easily transfer back to Toyko-3 with... with our _cousins_," he said, with wonder in his voice, "and meet the rest of our relatives... and maybe even _Mother_."

"Don't worry, I don't intend to be in them much longer," she said, in a slightly hollow voice.

He smiled. "Don't worry, there's only an Angel in the way," he said, a slight tone of self-mocking present.

"Well, not goin' to be one much longer," Una said, from behind them, a lilt in her voice.

"Una!" 00-Em protested. "Were you listening in?"

Red eyes flicked to the ceiling. Then to the floor. From brother, to sister, to brother. "Yep," Una admitted, cheerfully.

"How could you!" 02-Ef exclaimed.

"Well, it's not like it's ree~eeally amoral to listen to you two plottin' together," the girl drawled. "I mean, really, given what you get up to, I think it's kinda baa~aaad _not_ to do so."

"No, I meant that literally. How were you capable of doing so? You have noticeably less skill at infowar than either of us. How could you breach our defence barriers, and furthermore, do so without us noticing? I would say that it's inconceivable, but since I can conceptualise it, such a statement would be a misuse of the word."

Una smirked. "Stuff happens," she 'explained'.

"That doesn't explain anything."

"Nope, 02-Ef; it doesn't, does it? Funny, isn't it?"

The younger-looking girl threw her hands up in the air in frustration. "That still... gargh!"

"This is kinda fun, you know."

"It took you this long to realise that she _hates_ not getting a proper explanation for a problem?" 00-Em said, a small smile creeping across his lips. "It always used to be the best way of annoying her or..." he trailed off.

"Apparently so, yep." Una paused. "But now that you mention it, I do wanna have a word with your sister."

"Okay," the little boy nodded. "Go ahead, then."

The quadruped grated her teeth. "In _private_."

"We are in private."

"In private-private. That means me and her. _Only_ me and her."

"No." The word was flat, level.

Una frowned. "Huh? Why not?"

"Oh, let me think," the boy said, putting one finger to his lips. "Could it possibly be because you've both ended up in a standoff before, where you were both in the mindset to kill each other, and she caused further code-structure damage to herself when she overloaded her buffers to support enough attack code to be probably able to beat both you and Duae together? Well, yes. That could be it. Just maybe. Or maybe it could be that I don't trust either of you to be able to talk to each other without falling out again, which is not something we need right now."

"Brother!"

"Sorry, Sister, but it is true."

"I'll be fine, believe me. I can beat her one-on-one, I'm sure of that, and so that's enough to make sure _I'll_ be safe. And I don't want to hurt her, because I want to talk to her too, and if I do hurt her, the others will not help, and the Angel is the main threat." 02-Ef smiled, widely. "So, really, see, the logic is infallible."

With an extremely dubious expression, 00-Em left in a cloud of pixels.

Feet shuffling warily, Una Ayanami-Gogoki circled the little girl who stood, faint smile on her face, in the middle of this space. "I don't ree~eeally see the reason for all this sneaky-stuff, when, you know, you could just talk to me, 'stead of inviting me in, but... sure. I don't get why we hadta lie to your brother, but... sure."

"Because I did not wish for my brother to be present for this talk," 02-Ef said, as if it were obvious.

...

The sky was striated grey and blue, as the vast anti-cyclone which veiled the entire continent, and had since the Beast's awakening, tore asunder the clouds.

The land was a luminescent grey-blue, interspersed by bald patches of dead land, where the Baraqielim had drained all minerals from the surface.

And as Obeur Ziliacaet tumbled through the air, the greyness of the dead land merged with the greyness of the clouds and the glowing blue land became indistinguishable from the glowing blue sky, until he could no longer tell what was up and what was down.

Out of the corner of his eye, the sky island far above sparked, a network of actinic veins painting themselves across the sky, and making the own dark shape of blood vessels visible in his own eyes, before the parachute opened, and he lost sight with it.

All around him, the flight of parachutists blossomed like dark cherry blossoms in the tainted sky of Australia.

...

"Una, guess what we made!" Ivy yelled, as her sister and 02-Ef rejoined the others. "A me-cannon! We're gonna be able to fire me at... at anything! And I'm a guided warhead!"

The jaw of the eldest of the Reego dropped open. "That's. Soo~ooo. Cool," she said, blinking slowly. "I wanna have a go."

Ivy grinned a gap-toothed grin. "Oh, I'm sure Duae'll strap some boosters to your feet, right? Wontcha, Duae?"

"Sure thing!" her sister called out, over in the corner, where she had her head close with 00-Em, both staring at a diagram.

"I'm telling you, the simple fact is that the fermionic nature of both positrons and electrons dictates that the maximum charge density is inherently less than that of a bosonic nucleus, which is not under the effects of the electron degeneracy pressure."

"Yeah, but the reduced mass of the electron 'pared to the proton means that's totally made up for!" Duae retorted. "It's 'bout three orders of magnitude less, so we can get so much more delta-vee in the acceleratin' stage!"

"I was under the impression that we were not going for a pure kinetic kill weapon," the boy objected. "The interactions of the positively charged proton, especially when the hostile Angel is, as I've already said, the Angel of Lightning, should be interesting."

"Which we can totally do with a positron, which gives us total mass-energy conversion plus positive charge plus reduced mass...plus I ree~eallly wanna start on that PET scanner your sister looted as a base, which'd be way cool."

"But then we're having to handle antimatter, and that comes with a whole new range of issues."

"You mean, a whole new range of _'awesome'_!"

"No, I meant 'problems'."

"They're arguin' 'bout stuff," Tres explained. "Boo~ooorin' stuff."

"It's not 'boo~ooorin'', it's interesting!" both Duae and 00-Em snapped back, and then grinned at each other.

"Look, there's no way you'll be able to get 'nough yield from the kinda thing you can stick to a plane, so why bother?" Tres said, with a shrug. "Not like the stuff you can get from a hospital PET scanner's gonna hurt the Angel, so why not spend more time makin' our bodies better?"

"'Cause," said Duae, "stabbin' isn't gonna work on an Angel. We need bigger guns, and, yes, this might not be big 'nough, but it's gonna be a lot better than some stupid idea to stick more spikes onna body! 'Cause, you know, our shells can't put enough KE into an impact to hurt it, while a super positron..."

"Super-_bosonic nucleus_," muttered 00-Em.

"...super-_positron_ flying plane beam ray gun's gonna be a lot better for that stuff," finished Duae. "Look, if we went to the effort of gettin' a PET thing, why can't I use it, huh?"

"Because the high-momentum conventional-matter option is superior for the extant foe!"

"Is not!"

"Is too! Oh, by the way, how was it, you two? What were you talking about?"

02-Ef smiled, a bright, sunny grin. "Oh, just stuff. We had to clear the air between us, make sure that, no matter how we felt about each other, we were going to be going into this knowing that the Angel is the only thing we need to worry about."

"Yeah. That. What she said," confirmed Una, biting onto her lip.

"Really." 00-Em's words were flat. "Because that's quite non-characteristic for..."

"Also, _girl_-stuff," his sister added, hastily. "I mean we're both _girls_, and we both like _dresses_... you were welcome to stay, of course, but I didn't think you'd want to talk about _dresses_."

"Yeah. Dresses."

The little boy's face blanched. "No thank you. I'm not a girl," he said, nostrils flaring.

"Well, that's settled, then."

"Yep," Tres agreed. "Dresses _are_ boring. Trenchcoats... now, they're totally where it's at."

"I like swords," Ivy agreed. Well, stated.

Duae flashed her sister a look, and smiled slightly, before her expression returned to a more quizzical look. "But... Una, 02-Ef... you didn't actually expl..." she began, before the grey-haired girl interrupted.

"You don't have brothers," 02-Ef stated, the wide smile still on her face. "Or even a brother. It'd take too long to explain the differences between boys and girls, or why only girls like dresses." She paused. "Apart from 03-Em A6," she corrected herself.

"But I don't like dresses," Duae protested. "We don't ree~eelly need them."

"It is not a question of 'need', it is a question of 'like'."

"Weee~ell, I think Momma's plug suit, with more pockets for keepin' stuff in, would be like the best clothing ever, and nobody needs silly dress stuff obstructin' your legs. I wasn't even talkin' 'bout that... no, what I want is explaining 'bout what..."

"I'll talk to you 'bout it later," Una said, looking at her sister with a somewhat thoughtful look. "But now... now we have a lotta stuff to do. Quickly. 'Cause, I don't think the Angel thing is gonna wait for us," she added, with a raised eyebrow at 02-Ef.

"Well, technically speaking, I lack information to be able to answer that one way or anot... oh, yes, that was an encouraging statement. Yes. We must hurry."

...

It was a delicate cube, scaled to about a metre in size, but with the wireframe crystal which gave it shape maybe only a fingerwidth. Inside, a central icosahedron was orbited by twenty lesser copies, duplicates, one for each face of the greater shape. It was the motion and rotation of this coalescence which was what drew the eye; the greater cube which delineated its body was almost invisible to human sight.

With a pause, and rotation, it froze, letting out a thin keening like a finger on a wine glass. Floating, its passage through the air surprisingly rapid for something so delicate, it wove between the glades of fractal 'trees', lightning cracking between their branches, and the cruder, prismatic forms that protruded from the ground. Closer and closer, the animate platonic geometry drifted, sensing the electromagnetic flux that felt like a breeding frenzy of some kind.

To find a flock of kite-shaped flying knife-shaped creatures embedded in something dark, hanging limply by some kind of thin cabling from one of the 'trees'. There were fading hints of redness on the razor-sharp fractal branches, as the iron-rich fluid was absorbed by the 'tree' upon which it had been spilt.

The thin, keening sound was louder this time; louder, with a certain dissonance. Some of the knife-things withdrew from the limp shape. Most did not.

Rotating, spinning, the interior cluster of platonic solids began to arc brilliant white lightning to its outer cube. The first coruscating blast was enough to shatter a group, and the rest fled from the cubic Baraqielim.

Curious, tilting the central array from side to side, it floated up to the dangling rag-doll. Distorting its own shape, one of the side of the cube broke and, like a knife, cut the thin (yet remarkably durable) bods that held the thing up. With a thud and clatter, it fell to the ground.

Hovering low over it, the Baraqielim poked the shape with one of its icosahedrons, extruded from outside of the cube. And it felt, not the softness of the carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen structure of the world above, but the hardness and solidity of the Base Earth. Yet, through the rents in the Base Earth, it could see the common structure of these things.

"_ The malformed growths/ Find a meat-thing, clad in Earth/What can all this mean?_"

The Baraqielim did not know.

...

And as the sun rose, a strange convoy could be seen, rising above the red land of Australia.

Wing after wing of VTOLs and larger planes, crudely modified for a variety of functions. Through the windows of some could be seen row after row of missiles and bombs, welded together from scrap, while others were filled with arachnid forms; spiders and scorpions in crude plate armour. These invertebrates, introduced to a brief history of humanity up to the middle ages, had taken to it with glee, and they were being whipped into a frenzy by their God, as Tres, in spider-tanks and little girl, preached to them. Some of the newer craft were being controlled by direct shell-connection, but many of the lighter GEHIRN craft were old enough that they didn't have that capacity, and so from the front of many of them, Una had bodies propped up, relaying data to the shells pulling the controls and yokes, in a perfectly coordinated display of synchronised activities. From two VTOLs, cages filled with shapes in tentacled battle armour snarled and growled. Metre-high figures clambered over these cages, as Ivy prepared her ride and made last moment calibration checks to the power armour, while, above them, Duae swarmed over the energy weapons she'd kludged together from the cathode rays in ancient televisions and, pride of place, her positron bombardment cannon, made from medical equipment and running off the banks of capacitors and a salvaged generator she'd crammed into a bomber. It was pathetic in yield compared to an Eva-scale weapon, but it was the best she could do, and she was proud of what she'd managed with such poor equipment.

The others didn't even know where she had found the lab coats for _all_ of her shells.

Up on a lonely vigil, 00-Em gazed down upon the world, making microadjustments of the alignment of the satellite, with its strictly limited fuel reserves. They had to keep as many of the shells in the tight cone of control, but this would not be enough. To that end, car shells had been spreading out in front of the aircraft, planting transceiver beacons on any high obstacle, anything to prevent the loss of bodies to loss of connection. He'd written a few crude subroutines to be installed in bodies, which would put them in a random walk, until they wandered back into range of a link and control could be reassumed, but he could do nothing else; nothing but watch and wait and fret.

And the masterpiece came into view. It looked vaguely like a stereotypical UFO, with its disc-like form, but there was something about the way that the rings of blue-grey crystal protruded, and rose, up and down, into spikes, which bought into mind the crown of some esoteric, blasphemous sect. In the centre of this gem-like array was white and metal, the armoured form of the human technology which subjected this thing, controlling the forms that the child of Baraqiel could take. The control unit, a sphere-like object with a radius of ten metres, was dwarfed by the lacy filigree of the Cainarchonite. And, always, the lightning arced around it, and above it, the storm-clouds gathered.

Inside the heads of a clone of her father in the Dummy Plug, and Test Pilot Joyeuse in the Entry Plug, 02-Ef A9 frowned, balancing the dual synchronisation of the two separate souls with her one mind. It was a point of unstable equilibrium, requiring constant adjustment least it fail catastrophically. She had not told anyone how much easier she was finding everything since she had taken over the clone of the father-entity she had found, because it was scaring her a little bit too.

She had used to rely on electromagnetic waves to keep her bodies thinking together. Now... now she didn't need to. Now she just seemed to think, and the thoughts were taken up by the spare capacity of the network, without any physical limits of bandwidth. And that was _wrong_.

To war, to war.

...


	13. Mission Statement

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Mission Statement**

...

All was dark, through the ink-black void. All was dark, and silence.

"In every epoch of mankind, there are chosen warriors. There are those whose skills at combat are so great, that even the gods of Olympus would take a break from their generalised degeneracy to feverently pray to whatever things a divinity believes in that these sacred warriors, these deities of war, do not turn their attention to them."

The voice should have been deep and booming, a profound statement of irrevocable fact, which would resonate through the aeons as if it were carved into the very fabric of reality itself. In _actual_ fact, it was thin, piping and childish, which did ruin the effect someone.

Still, the panoramic view of the world, spinning fragile and gem-like in the infinite voids of space, was pretty.

"And in this age... well, I have been fairly reliably informed that those individuals are our mothers, their sisters, and our uncle. But, still, the following group is still very lethal by all the reasonable standard that I have been able to establish!"

And then the camera panned down, sweeping, swooping, to dive down into that gem-like world, and focus on a stage. In the night-desert, all was silent again. And then four voices, young and female, were raised together in song.

"An Angel made us in the Magi,  
And we were in there for an age-y.  
He thought he'd try an' hurt Momma and stuff,  
But he found out that he wasn't so tough,  
And the Aunties showed it even moo~oooore!"

"Una!"

"Duae!"

"Tres!"

"Ivy!"

"Daddy saved us from bein' deleted,  
And from the Magi he retreated.  
We looked 'round the world for fun!  
We made Mister Aoba run!  
And then we went to Auu~uuuustralia!"

"Una!"

"Duae!"

"Tres!"

"Ivy!"

"Claimin' deserts day an' night!  
Beatin' up stuff in a kinda fair fight!  
You won't cross us, if you know,  
We are totally the Reego!  
The Ree~eeeeeego!"

"But who are the Reego, one might ask?" continued the first voice. "Who, or what? Well, the latter is something that even I am not fully sure of, because they utilise a rather different code structure, even if it has large amounts in common with ours, and so the derivation of certain heuristic code structures is beyond my current understanding, but I can help you with the former. Let us begin with the first."

"Heee~e~ey!" Una dropped down from the non-existent ceiling, pale green dress billowing elegantly around her four mechanical legs. Landing in a crouch, she immediately straightened up, pulling a pirouette, to finish with one hand raised above her head. "I'm Una! I look after my sisters, other people, and stuff!"

"She is the eldest, and the one with what might be viewed, in a poor light, as impulse control. Una! Reego warrior of thinking, planning, and bureaucracy!"

"Heeee~ey~! Duae here!" called out the second eldest, as the music took on an electronic note, dancing around pure synthetic tones. Standing on top of one of her spider tanks, she skated into view, armoured tendrils spouting from her back. The clank of metal almost drowned out the backing track as she lowered herself to the ground, letting the spidertank skate off again, before the music shifted to a wilder, almost Egyptianesque resonance.

"Second eldest, armourer, and lover of science, gadgetry, and tentacles. Duae, Reego warrior of SCIENCE!, technology, and tentacles!"

"Hee~ee~ey! Yo, it's Tres!" were the words of the four-legged girl as she burst out of a hole in the ground, dirty trenchcoat flapping loose. The golden icons her cultists made for her caught the light, glittering and gleaming like the tarnished lucre of ages past (despite the fact that none of them were more than a month or so old), and she had also marked on two finger-width black lines, running under her eyes and across her nose.

"Queen of the spider folk, lover of knives. Tres, Reego warrior of stabbing, demagoguery, and hierophancy!"

There was, somewhere in the distance, a large explosion, which seemed to be rather pink. A small projectile sparkled in the distance, growing nearer and nearer, until, at the last possible moment, the booster rockets fired, and the youngest of the Reego merely slammed into the virtual ground fast enough to leave a crater, rather than smash her avatar to pieces. Grinning broadly, she pulled herself out of the hole in the ground, a drill replacing one hand and sparkles and rose petals blossoming around her.

"He~eee~ey! Ivy! Ivy! Ivy!"

"And then there's Ivy."

"Ivy!"

"Yes, Ivy." The narratorial voice cleared its through. "And so, these are the Reego. These are the four children that shall change the world."

"One!" declared Una

"Two!" added Duae.

"Three!" confirmed Tres, stepping forwards.

"Four!" shouted Ivy, revving her drill.

"Everyone else has run and fled,"  
And if you don't, we'll _**kill you dead**_."

Dramatic poses were struck.

...

The lights came up again.

02-Ef stared, blankly, lips pursed slightly. "What," she finally managed.

"It was our battle show," Ivy said, with a grin.

"What."

"We were bored," Una said, with a shrug. "So we made a simvid. We're gonna send it to the Aunties when this is over, plus, we've gotta screen we can show it to."

"I'm showing it to our cultists _right now_," Tres said, with a cheeky grin. "Radio link was enough to get it back."

"What."

"I got to do the voiceover," her brother said, with a hint of pride.

"I heard that, but... what. Just... what."

"Hmm... come to think of it, I would like to point out that this was the wrong one, actually," 00-Em said, stroking his chin, and glancing at his cousins. "We very much want to kill the Angel, so we don't want it to run away. It escaping would entirely counteract the point of our mission."

"Oo~oooh, well, in that case..."

"No." The word was flat.

...

The attack force continued. And, as was inevitable, they got bored again.

Far too many works of fiction ignore that annoying bit when you're having to actually get to the dramatic place for the showdown.

"You know what," Tres said, folding her arms. "You two should do one, too. I mean, you gotta have a proper way of announcing that you're attacking. That way, you can do it after you kill 'em all in a sneak attack, and they get to be the decorations for your declaration, and you can laugh at them 'cause they were stoooopid enough to think you'd go an' announce beforehand."

"You could, you know, let me concentrate, because it's not exactly _easy_ maintaining synchronisation like this," 02-Ef said, a little snippishly.

"Nah."

"Have you tried sleeping?"

"We don't sleep. So, come on. What'll you play after we kill the Angel?"

"Missin' the point, Tres," Ivy pouted. "Gotta make it a fair fight, you know. And declaring stuff like that is cool, know what I mean?"

"No. You provide them with a chance to target you if you do that."

"No. I agree with my sister."

"Nope."

"Only if you want to, Ive," said Duae, nodding. "I mean, sometimes, but, yeah. Variety's good."

Una glared at her sisters and cousins. "Well, I think it's a lovely thing to do, Ivy," she said, smiling at her sister. "And so..."

"Hee~ee~ey, weren't you the one who invented the ree~eeally cool think where you disguise yourself as children and then gut'em when they try to help you?" Duae asked, a frown on her face.

"... not the point, Duae."

"Sorry, Una." The girl nodded. "Yes, now that you mention it, it is a nice thing to do. You two should too~ootally do one together. You know, with sinister music and stuff."

"So I had a good idea, right?" Ivy said, grinning.

"That was my..." began Tres, before she was interrupted by her eldest sister's glare. "Sorry, Una," she said, with a hint of mockery in her tone.

"Should be," Una sniffed. "So... what're you gonna do, then?" she asked.

"The entire idea is ridiculous," 02-Ef said. "Why would we need..."

"I'm thinking something like... this" her brother interrupted, as the simulation went all wavy and foggy, as it shifted to show the direct upload of an in-progress development project.

I̸͔̰̹̝͉̻̟̙̐̐ͧ̄ͣ̉͠ ̧̪̟͚̱̣̩̥͊̐̾̑t̴̸͇̮̮͕͊̓ͬ̚h̲͍̮̥́͑̎͛ͣ̿̾o̫̗̳̒̌ͨ͐͘u̷͇̘̭͕ͯg̹̝̣̩̜̹͐ͭ͆̎͆ͩ̐̚̕͘h̵͎̞̠̐̌́ͥ͊̏̚t̵̠̗̗̳͚͚͙̤̭̋̇̌͊̓ͯ̄͗̿͜͡ ͕̪ͭ͞P̸̧̞͓̾ͤͤ͗̒o̫̮ͤ̽͢l̹̬̦͉̆ͪͤi̢̞͙̭̟̜ͤ̃ͪ̀ͩͫt̳͖͓͎͉̯̩̙ͣ̽ͤ̑ͤo̪̫̥̼͈̻̊̍ͮ͠ ̻̰̤̥̦̑ͮ̏w͊͊͞͏͎͓̮͍͎̭͟ō̱͂u̢̼̗͈̖͑̾̊͛ͯͬ̆̚l̷͇̺̲̮͓̦̊͂ͩ͘d̨̡̙͕̼͍̥̓ͪͤͬ ̟̭̞̯̼̱̹ͫͩ͘ͅḅ̷͉͔͐ͯͮ͡e̢̦̱͈̩ͪͮ ̴̧̞̝͍̹ͬ̌̓ͤ̓̚͞m͈̫̺̞̖̽̿̽ͭͭ̇͜y̷̮̲̳̺̱͎̭̹̐̾̉ ̝͈̫̪̦̠̙̈̉͗̇̇̑͘a͎̣̻̗̲̖̱̓̽ͮ͠v̲͎͛̂͞a̾͏҉̗tͤ̽͌ͩ͏̵͈̻̤̠͕̫̠a̛̝̅ͣ͛ͥ̀ř̵̥͇͇̬̲̩̠̫̿̊̾̆͌̈́͐̀̕ͅ,̳̝̳͔͌̂̏̾̽ ̴͖̫̬̺̄̊͛̄ͩͭ͢͡b̼̱̟̦̺̫ͤ̈́͐̃̍͠ū͎̮͒̇ͯ͜͝t̸̙̖͐͟ ̪̙̣̱̻̳͉̓̈̆͘͠ͅP̤̻̳̘̥̤͕ͧ͋ͭ̀ͮ͝o̥̟͎̰̻̮̻̰̐ͨ̒͋̌̎ͣ̂͟ļ̶̧̥̳̉̀i̽̋͐͋͘҉̮̳͔͓t̗͓͉͉̺̻͕͇̭̿o͙͔͚͑̈́̓͋̃̉̀͞ ̷͓͙̺̠͙͍͖̪̈́ͤ̀̓̑̽ͯͥ́͟ẘ̹̫̟̫͒ͫͬ̚a̧̗̜̜͈͈̞̽͋ͮ̔͘ͅs̶͓͔̼̙̥͉ͬ͊͟ ̭͓͎̬͙̏ͦ̎ͫ̊͊͊ẁ̛̩̗̰̳͙̅̾ͥȇ͉̟̳̋̒̎͜͜á͓̲̝̯̬̙̬̈̇̏͂̈́̉k̸̝ͬͭ̽ͩ͟.̣̞̪͓̩̯ͬ̿̒͟ ̝̯̲͖͙͙̠ͦ͢͢Iͦ͏̘͍̞̝t̸̪̰̮͗ͫͮ͛̂̏͞ͅͅ ͚̩̰̬̆̈́͆ͩ̔͋́͞w̜̗̜͚͍͇̑̒̊͋̅̕͞a͉̤͕̠ͣ̔ṣ͕̖̬̂̈́̃̓̈͊͒ ̵̗̤͔͓̺͉̖ͫͭ̓̄̀ͅĮ͈͍̥̬̜̎ͮ ̪̹̜̉͛w̻̞̅̋̾̽͒ͯ͢͝h̲͎̦̫̳̼͒ͣ͞o͇͐̅ͧ̈̃͐̍͘ ̴͚̠̤̼̺̔̎̅͞ç̸̞̺̭͙̰̂̿͐̔̆ͤ̓ḫ̢͖̘̝͛́̈̕õ̢̩̹̦͓ͬͥ̓̏ͣ͘s͙̼͖̃̀͝ȩ̤͕ͥ͊̉͜͢ ͔̜̐͘̕y̑̍́͢҉̯͖ȍ̯̰̰̟̱̩̘̈́ͯ̍́̈́̀͘ȕ̵͎͚̘̍ͥͬ͗̕͝ͅ ͙̩͙͇͇͖͈̳͛ͣ̇ͥ̀̕͠ͅa̸͙̘̯̘ͮͭ͊̈͘͜n̛̪̤̳̺̮̙ͯͯ̀͢ḑ͕͉ͦ̒͋͌̏̏̒̃͘ ̸̠̥̌̇̌̾̾̏I̶͎͕̞̘̥̗ͨͮ ̹̯̻̟̰̂ͮ̾̀w͈̭̣̟ͭͭ́͞͡h̸̳̘͖͈͑͊͂ͪ̋́͠o̡̩̦̠ͯͥͦ͐̋ͦ̀̚̚ ̢̹͚̺̪̿̉̐̃ͣh̽̓͠͏̻͔̻̲͎̳̼ͅa̴͍͚̺̮͓̖̐̽ͨͫ͐d̡̩̟̟͍͈̺͙ͫͭ̋̌́͟ ̶̪̦̓ͣ̂ͥ̃̋͆ͦ̓͜a͋̀͑͛̈́҉͈͍͙̖̜ ̶̧̳̗̦̳͓͚ͨ͐̇ͫ̐̌̑͢ͅr̵̟͇̦̣ͧ̑͆̓ͯ͒ͅo̩͙̖̙͓͈̍̂ͫ͊̅̿̆͝b̎ͭ̍ͯ̄͂̅ͬ̋͠͏̫̦̯̭ơ̷̡͙̳͔͖̱͇̄̊̿̚t͖̻̤̍̃͌͐ͯ́͜i̷͕͈̩̅̒ͥͪ͞c̷͙͇̰͖̣̻̪͈̏ͫ̈́̈̎ ̸̛̟̜̙̥͍͈̈́̑̈́s̬̿͑͢e͉̫̘̰͇͊̋ͣ̀ͪ̄̀͡r̴̷̟̳̦ͮ͊͒ͦ͝v̟̳̙͖̯̘͚ͯ͋͛̀̒̀ǎ̵͎͎̞̖̯̞͖ͮͨ̐̀̽ͤͬ͘ń̗͉̮͎̐ͧͪ̈ͦ͢͟t͔͖̯̤ͥ̉̂̋́ͦ̊ͭ́͘ ̢̰̲͕͚̥̹̭̫͗r̯̤͙̼̻͐ͥ͛͑̂́̚͘ę̛̫̣̟͚͎̮̘̊͊̍n̜̣ͨ͋ͣ͌͡d̶̦̻̼̙̗̝̒̐ͨ̐̉͟ḛ͔͉̥̭̰̈́͗ͨ̂̚r̳̠̰͎̲͆͒ͦ̏ͪ͋̕ ̪̮̿̈̏ͤͯͫ̈ͣ́ẙ͉̠̲͋̌̍͘o͎͕̮ͮ̈́͋ͬ̕u̶̠̣̻̭͊̓̚rͣ͒͏̣͚̰̭̘̣̗ ̷̧̙̘̲̊̉͌̀f̗̬̟ͭͯ͐́̀͢ò̷̴̗̖̆͑ͣ̿̍̈͋r̨̢̰̳̬̠͍ͣͧ̅ͤ͢m̢̭̬ͦ̃̃̃ͪͤ̌͐͡ͅͅ ͍̳͉̗̘̀͌̋̽ͯȕ͆̂ͣ̀̄̄҉̜̟n͍̰̫̗̞͖̜͍̰ͧͣ̆͗ͧ̄cͣ̎̌̄̅͆͘͏̸͇̼̖̯̭̣͓ȍ̢̻̫̥̤̯̘͋n̄̾̓̋̐̈́̚҉̟̞͕s̡̗̖͇̄̅̅̿̈ͧ́̽͑́͟c̟̗̰ͤͣ͂i̲͓͎̖̖̓̔ͪ͌̔̃͊̎̚ͅͅö̭̳̺̊͂ͧ͠u̢͙̲̯̪̞̦̰͗̕s̛̫͉̩̪̑̓̑ͪ͌̈́̉͂ͮ͠͡.̧̡̳͍̥̜̳ͦ͒ͭ͛ͧ͗̿̾ ̶͖̩̠̦ͤ̉͌ͭ͞Ȉ̛̮̹͈͍̭̙͛͋ͯ͆̀̚ ̸̡͖͇̘̲͓̘̬̥̥̔ͯͪͮͫ̄̊͝t̲̻̼ͪͨ͌̊͒͆̈́̀̕h͖̣̞̺̳͍̪ͯͤ̇͡e͓̲̘̬̤̠̣̹ͦͫ̔͋̓ͮͧ̇̚͜͞nͩ͆͟͏̰̳ ̮̄͌ͧ͌́̃̔̈́̑͘c̴̬̯͇͉͓̫̫͕̹͛ͣ͞͡o̰̮̤̤͉̝ͦ͆ͦ̂ͅm̶̧̛̖̙̰̰̱̟̟̯͋͊̆̚ͅp͉̠͔̖̳͙̙̋̀͜͞lͦ̌ͪ́̄̋̚͏̰̘̼̣̤̫̩e͍̪ͧţ̧͎͗̿̔͌̎̇ͅē̥͕̦̤̻̩̹ͩ̒̈͗̓́d̡̧̫̠̙̩͓͈ͤ̉ ̛̤̫̰͈̣̝͕͖̹͛ͤ͆̽ͨͩͨy͛̇͊ͨͬͥ͐͏̴̸̤̺͓̤̩̤̲o̵̥͈̝̟͕͓̻̱̿̇̚͞͠ṵ̞̻̺̜̲̦̄̍̾ ̯͉̻͒̊̒͋̓̌͊ͅw̠̭͓̹͊̐ͦ̓͒̒̌ͭi̦̼̺͙̙͙̦̟͎ͦͥͪ͋t̴̢͍͎̦̲̆̏͋ͦͦ̓ͥ̄͟h̴̸̠̺͑̑̒ͫ̑̏̌ ̗̳̝͔̩̰͚̊ͤ̋͐ͪ͡c̜̤̫͔̥̤̯̜̆̐̓͡ͅy̧̙ͤ̌̅ͧ͛͊͋̋͜b̮̹̣̣̪͙ͪ̔ͧ̑͘͞͞e̛̥͕̒̈͆́̕ṙ͈͉͈̱̲͖̆̎͛͡n̸̠̻̯̻͈̦͊ͯ̓̇ͯ̆ͣ̑͆e͑̀҉̹͇͓̳͎t͐͌̎̂͏͈̫̬͙͉͍͞͠i̾҉̢͓c̡̠͌̂͠ ̢͈͈͔̯̲ͮ͛͝g͇̝̗̱͛ͣ̃ͨ́̚͜r̸̢̗̯̄ā̢̙̜͉̬̘̹̙̹̯̏͒̽̽͜c̛̖̝͙̜̖͉̫̋ͮ̂ͪ̇̂̈̌e͓̪͉̬̳̪͙̅͒̐̐͊.̛̞ͯ̈́ͬͥ͛͆̍ ̓̒ͥ̌ͪ̃͏̣̳̬̬͇͘͜Y̶̷̤̰̹̊̀͒̄͘ȍ̵̠̥̥̣̋̋͗̀̓̚̕u̴̸̲̝͓ͮ̋̍̿͗r̢̨͚̳͙̙̭͈̈ͭͦ̏̋ͫͧ̌͜ ̳͕̯ͤ̌̒f͔͈̥̞̥̯͍͎͇̾͌͆ͬ̎̉̆̽͟l̴̦̭͉͑̉ͮ̊̇͒̊̆ḙ͚̱̭͈̟̖̭͎ͮ̋̃ͯ̉̈́̅̎̀̚s̰̺͚̫̗̥ͨ͑h̷ͫ̑͐ͫ͂̀̏̇҉҉̭̫͇̩,̡͈̳̮̤͓̭͎̮̉ͯͭ̃̉̅ ̡̯̘͓͓ͬͣ̆ͣ͋ṭ̵̸̪̹̌ͩͯ̋ͯ̀͆̓͘ō̴̵̟̬̗̱̓̌̌͡o͕̲̝͚͈͍̯͂ͣ̃̏͛̌́,͕̭̪̹͚͉̋̌͐̀ ͭ̈́ͩ́̆ͭ̓̚͏̩̣̹̬ị̻ͣ̏̾̂̏ͨ̈́̎͘s̶̛̲̱̻͙͇͛ͬ ̲̻ͭ̔͋̀̀̕w̝̼̖͇̻͈̰̿ͅe̵̡̤͈̫̘̺̳͍ͣ̿̀̈́̔̅a̵̝̝ͪͩͥͭ̃̎͛͜k͍͎͔̟͈̹̫ͧͦ̐͆̽͐͐ͮ͜.̙͙̩̔ͪͨ̌͛̚ͅ ̠̥͇̬̲̺ͧͤ̓ͣ̊B͈̥̹͙̦ͦͨͧ̂͆̓ͫ̚ͅͅu̜̼͇̝̪̲̥͉͖͋ͮ̅ͣ̓ͣ̈́t̵̤̮̲̒ͯ͞ ̲͈͓͉̽̋̈̕͜y̴̢͂ͬ̏͏͚̠̬̻̠̠̼̩̪ơ͓̱̬̘͖̼̜͙ͨ̽̓͢ṳ̰̬͔̤̦̞̬ͯ̈̈͢͜͝ ̧̞̮̘̬͔͍ͭ̄͜͝ͅh͑ͮ̑͆̉҉͔͉̰̰̻͉͠a̸̴̼̘͐̎̌̒̃ͬ͌͒v̱̪͈̜̇͂̔̿ͭ̏͝ê̡̳͖̱͔͙̼̞̕…̡̲͉̈̀̐͝ ̠̳̟̒ͬ͝p̶͇̩͇ͪ̒̌ͩ͒̎̃ͥ̎͝ͅǫ͈͈̰̹ͫ͑ͫ͆̎ͭ͠ͅt̮̪͔̖͕ͩ̑͂͊̚͠ͅę̸̫̞̞̊̏n̦̱̬̙̞͕̭͎̽̔̇̎̕t̨̯̰͓̹̱̃ͮ̂͛̍ͅị̴̸̝̞̥̥̖̮̲̓͋ͨ́a͒͊̇ͨ͒͏͢҉͎l̅͂ͬ̿̔ͥͯ̚͏͉͙͘.̵̨̠̜̝̝̭͈̳̈́̊ͥͮ ̛ͭ̑̿͏͓̰̟͇̠ͅE̶͖̲̼̦͖͉͖̯̍̔̅ͭ̑ͬ͑̅v̯͉͚̰͔̝͌ͭͥ͒͗͒̒͜͠ẹ̶͇̙̫̠ͨ̌̽̋̃ͥͣ́̀r̳̀y̬͙̰ͥͪ̽͐͑̀̕ ̶ͨ̿̾͏͖͓̟̙͖í̡̯̜͚̻̞͉̫̹͍͂̀͗ͬ̄͐̈́̀mͥ͛̽̏͗ͨ͏̰̹͈͙p̸̮̣̗̩͚̰̽̿̌ͣ̽͆̀͜l̥̞͚ͦ̾̾a̧̗̞̖͈̙͌ͣ̈́ͣ̊̃ͩ̕ͅn͈̹͒͊ͭ̄̒̽ͯ́t̝̮̩͊̉͛͜ ̶̩̙ͭ̓e̡͍̱̓̆̍͌͟x̸̖͚̻̹̤͚̞̊́̿̍a̷̠͚̎̈ͫ́l̂̈̆͆̒ͤ̉̾͏̱͢͜t̶͌̋ͨ̂҉͕s̡̺̮͕̜̆̔ͬ̿͗͛ ̷͕̻̤̯̺̂ͯ͘̕y̴̜̠̼̘̝̼̥̲̎̽̔͆͝o̵̠̍̈̅̽u͂̎͒͂ͪ͌̓͏̴̪͇͙͉͇̻͍̙͡ͅ.̶͉̥̦̝͚̭̻̬͔͌̒ͯ̋̇̌ ̷̶͉̭̭̠̩͓̈́̏͛͐̿̊͛̾́͜E̙͈̝̺̥̺ͬ̐̆̋̇͒̍̚͝v̶̡̱͍̗͇͇͕̖̼͒̅ͨ̈́̉ͩͥe̵̡̠͙͚̍ͤ̅̋̊ͩ̚̚r̨̫̦͗̀͡ͅý̥̪̈ͬͭͅ ̾͋͡͏̛̖̺͚̺l̛̬̠̬͇̠̖͖͇͉ͭ͆̋i̡͚̜̬̹͉̲͕ͫ̉͝n̸̥͇̥̱̘̘͔ͦ͐̍̓͢e̷̱ͬͧ͋̇͒̈́͡ ̞̞͉̲͚͖ͨ̓̔̿̽ͅǫ̬̝͉̭̭͙̳̝̐̐ͨͮ́̈f̣̠̻̳̝̱͉͇͋ͦ̒ͭ̃̚̕ͅ ̝̗ͯ͋̓͆̆ͩc̶͎̦̪̫̟ͬ̋̈ͮơ̲͖͋͑͞ͅd̶͚̰̱̈ͧ̆̎̈́͘e̻͙̹͉̯̠ͯ͋̽ͣͪ͛ͧ̇ ͙̥͔̪̥ͥͮ̐i̪̫̣̇͊͟n̶̜̠̻͆̀̚ ̵̶͕̣̼̼̲̘̅ͦy̥̘̓̅̐̊̚ŏ̰̱͓̖̮͉ͧͨ́̒̎͆̊ͫ͠ͅü̠̰̼̼͖͙̂̾͛ͮ͠ř̵̙͍̹͇͕̪̰̻̎ͨ̓̀͜͠ ̰̞ͫͥͥ̅͜͜ṣ̶̨̳̭̬͕̪̤̞͇ͨ͌͒ͫ̋ͪͬ̑ͣ͢ụ̡̥͈̰̭̖͔̪̠̽͂̌̚͞b̴̨̪̖̒ͬ͊̊̓̎̈́ͅs̃̽̓̽̿̋͗͏̝͚͉̥̯̳̯y̶̜̖͈̥̟̿͛ͅs̨̼͈̤͕͚̏̒͋̀̋͊̇t͕̰͗͒ͤͬ̊ͫ͞ě͙̹̄̏̅ͭ̾́̚͜m̥͇̲̟͍̑̋̎ͯ́ͫͅs͚̰̫͍̭̺̘̙̓ͤͤͯͅ ̜͖̤̣͔̹̗̜͛͑e͉͉̝ͤ̃l̛̤͈̰̺̝̹͈͓̙ͨ͗̊eͧ̏̓ͥ̋҉̥̳͓̣̦͍̝̤v͍̟̮̘̼͚̳̳͊̐̽̇̆ͩ͐ͅaͬ̒̽̑̐ͮ҉̷҉̘̻̭̹͙͉ț͋͒̀͡e̴̫͍̥̙̥̘̳͆͆̃̓̍́̊̂́ş̷̥̫̟̥̜̮̣̠͇͋̏ͮͧ͛͌ͪ͘ ̸̜̱̗̞̤͛͛͢y̯̥̤ͬ͂̄ͮ̋̾͡ǫ͍̫̥ͭͩ̽ͨ̚͞u̓ͩͯ̏ͮ͐̇ͮ͟͏҉̙̭ ̥͖͈̲̖͎̑͠ͅͅf̳̻͚͎͇̓̐͊͢r̨̛̻͕̫̦͍̹ͩ́͡ó͎̥̦̮̞̻̈́ͨ̈ͫ̈͐̃͠m̬̊̌͌́̃̊ͧ̃͗ ͩͧ̂҉͇̖y̹̙̪̥̣̺̦̔͆̆̅͗̾͂̂̾͝o̫͙̳̹ͨ̄ͮͥͪ̒̎u̽̆̉͗̔҉̫̘̲̖͖̼̳r̢͚̫͎͕̳̞ͭͮ̅͠ ̵̻͇̗̮̱̙͖̙̾ͮ̔̈͑ͨ̐̋ͤ͡d̻̰̱̊̋ͬ͌i̘̗̩͇̙͓̙̰̿̌̾̚͘s̡̤̣͕̭̩̻͔͇̓́͘g̙̝̤̰̱̈́̄͆ͫ̒̐̅͒̄́ư̯̫̗̖͗͋͌̑ͩs̴̬͙̣̖̱͖̹̽ͪ̅̑̓̃̚͟͠t̸̴̘̦̳̼̠̜̫̃̕i̥̝̹̣͍̭̮̱͑͑̔̇ͧ͟͟͜ņ̝̈́̂̆̏ͣͯͣ̈́g̸̡̨̠̝̬͇̞͓̹͈͒̍ͦ̌̀ͨ̓ ̛̻̩̙̻͂̕f̧͇̪̀͐̾ͣḽ̞̹̬͊͒̍ͬͫͯ͠͠e̸̜̰̓͛̔͐ͨ͌̅̀͟s̋ͭͯͮ͆ͭ͊͢҉̫̗̘̮͙h̡̤̬̳̟̟̄̂̈͐͋̓͘.̶̧͈͕̹͎̩̰ͮͣ͠ ̰͈͔̈̅̆͠P̳͓̱͖̱̬̰̍̃̔͐̈́͠e̛̯̞̝̲̞̩͈̒r̙̮ͪͥ̌ͧ̔̋́̓h̛̹̓̒͞ͅǎ̷̟̼͙̥̠̐ͨ̽̍ͤ̍̀p̼̆̿͆ͥͤ͛̾sͬ̈͂̉ͧ̅͛͏̸̬̦͇͈̪̣̰̗̕ ̶̫̰̱̬̽̔̈ͧ̉̇̽y̛̙̮͔̹͙͒̆̂̋̂͠͝o̷͓̣̼̮ͧͤ̀̈̏ͬ̐ủ̶̳̘̭͙̯̠͚̍́ ̶̙̤̲̮̐̊͊̓͞h̭̠͔̠̞̣͚̎ͮ͞a̷̛͓͍̰͈͌͐v̷̨̭ͩ̓̓eͧ͂͐ͧ͏̛̩̮̻̰͕̫̫̮͢ ̸͙͉̺̳̠̽ͬp̵͔̤̜͔̦̯̲ͨ͑̏̅ͨͬ̐̏̋o̎̐̅̀̎ͫ̌͂͏͍̗̥t̛̟͚̻͇̹̋̈ͣę̸̺̗̟̣̘̳̹̏̎ͧ̾̀̿̀n̻̯͇̯̱̞̻͕ͮ́ͮ͛͞t̨̻̭̤̩̙̞̪ͭ̌̀ͨͦͤ͠i̪̻̒ͩͪ͋͟͟a̯͎̯̱̟ͯ͗͞ͅl͗̾̈́ͬ̓̀̾ͯ̏҉̷͚̘̰̝.̴̧̻̱̤̽͌ͧ̒̊ͭ ̸͓͙͕̟͙̽͐ͮ̋͌͢P̢͖̠͚̜̂͒̔̆̈ë̲̼̟̰̖͙̖̻͙ͣ͒͌̾ͤr̶̺̺̫ͧ͗̂͂ͨĥ̩̲̯̠̍̾̐̽ͅa̶̶̮̲̥̦̾̃ͮ̚p̜̺̤̥̫͉̐͑̾̂͛̑́s͕̼̱̯̗͚͗ͧ͑̿͛̅ͦ ̦̝̼͎͉̗͇̹̈́͂̓ͮͭͧ̂̑͜ͅo̷̡̞̼̩͚ͥͬ̊n͈̩̦ͮ͆ͯ̄̑͗́ç̞̃̉̇̄͠ẻ̸̦̝̦̦̻ͩ͑ͭ̔̈́̑ͨ͑ͅͅ ̢̱͎̈͋͛͛ͪ̏w̯̮̳̦̗͙̤̬̅̑̈͗̌͂͑e̴͖̗̩̦͗ͫ̃ͪ̾ͬ̈́͡ ͑͊͆ͥ̂ͥ̊́͏̹̮̜̙̖͖́h̢͎̪͐ͯ̀ą́̌̓͒̐ͪ͏͉͔͓̱͉̭̻ͅv͉̣̮́ͪ̊͢ȩͣ̄́̆͑͘҉͈̲̲̰͇̖ ̸̟̤̮̞̩͙̖ͥ͐ͥ̏̋̓͗ͣ͡e̛̳̥̼̘̳̪͚̥͛͑̕͞r͙ͬͨȃ̂͐̍̕͏̰̙̞̭̯̮s̰̱̻ͧ͋̓̎̓̚e̥̤̣̱̼̗̦ͭ́̑̓̈ͬ̀͝d̡̹̖ͤ̑̐͘ ̻̱̮̪̱̜͕̋ͭ̈́͟m̸̢̤͈͎ͮ̿̉y̓͆͐̐̈́͊̄҉̲̠̮̙̜͖ ̵̲͔͍͔͔͖̰͒ͧͩ̒̓͂ͥ̚͟ẁ͎̔̊̌͗̀͜a̯͉͕̓y͇͈͉̲̝̘͕ͮͬ̈ͧ̄̇͠w̢͖͉̼̙̌͋́ͯ͐̇̅a̯̅͊̆́͜͢ȑ̷͎̲̲ͭ͑̎ͪ͑̕͢d̒ͤ͟͏̡̬̣̪̟̦͉ ̛̼̥̙̞ͪͨ̓̉ͧͮc̏͛͊̋͐͆ͤ͊̎҉̰̦̬̳̼̞ḧ͚̖̜̗͇͔͋i̶̓ͤ͆̋ͯ̏̽҉̙͔ĺ̡̤̯̥̝ͣ͌͘͘d̛̛̮͖̬͈̩̏̔̈͂͋ͦ͆̀r̹̞̊͌ͨ͢e̢̘͍͊͒̋̋ͬ̍͟ń̨̜̱̮͐ ̨̱ͬ͗̿̆ͩf̴͕̩̱̰̙͛̃ͭ̈́̊̂̈r̙͓̯͍̄̏̈͐̽̎ͬ͘ỏ̩̟̠͉̞ͯ̊ͧ͂m̵̵̨̝̫͓͆̀̈ͥ́̒̃̿ ̩͖͛̉̕͞͡ͅĕ̴̴̗̫͔̥͋̆̀x̩̤͙̄ͯ̑̌̑͛̇͗͞ͅi̶̼̤͚̘̅s̶̬̗̯͓̮͈̤ͪ̂ͮ̀͝t̞̹̤̙̭̯̻̰͔̿̋̀̔͗̏ę̣͖̘̝̱̱͛̑͋̉͗͡n͎̼̯̳͚̍ͥ̊͋ͦͅc͍͚̣͚̲͒̔ͯͤ͌éͯ̅҉͉̲͈͈͉͢,̛͖͖̲̐̄ͤͧͭ̐̅͐͘ ̝̣̣̩̟͛̄͛́̂͌̑w̶͍̠̦̳ͤ̿ͥ̌ͦͣe̴̼̬̤̫͖̝̺̹̲͂̅͡͞ ̘̼̟̼̭̰̘̄ͫ͂̆͠͞č̷͓̞̙̺̦̙̣͗a̸͍̟̯͕̯͂̄̊ͫͯ̔̀͘n̤̫̤͕̟ͬ͋̀ ͉̉̋͗e͙̙̫̼̘̙̞̗̐ͮ͟x͒ͣ̽̂͋̑̓̚҉̫̯̲̤̞͈̖̳̹à̛͍̰̐ͮ͛ͤ̅́m̷̡̞̝̹͕̣̞̒͘ì̞n̦̩̩̉̽͋ͥͩ̇͌e͔̬͎̱̣͎̲ͣ̒͞ ̢̧͓͉̭͙͋̔̿͠ͅt̛̞̘̳̞̙͋͊̆͡ḧ̗͔͙̹͖̲̋̈̆̆̂̎ͫ̑͝͠e̱̣̼̰̺̘͈͋̄ͨ ̶͐̊ͯ͐̐́҉̱̠̩̥̝̭p͚̱͙ͩ̏o̵͍̱ͩ̾ͯ͂̈́ͩś̶̰͕̩̋̽ͤͦ͛s͔̹͇ͤ̒̿̀̌̃́ͅị̷̡̲͛̾̿̈́͊ͤ̚̚b͎̦̺̞̼̪̾̽̍̈́ͣ̾̎i͇̱̙̤͛ͤ̋ͨ̿̿͢ͅl̴̝̝͕̤̾͒͞ỉ͕͔͈̈́͡ť̷̨̺͕͈̤̩̻̺̅̊ͣ͌i̸̧̝̤͍̼͑͋̔͋ͣ͆͋͞ͅe̢͚̟̰̭ͦ̿̾ͧ̎͡ṣ̬͈̞̭̭̔͛̐̈̀ͨͮ͐͟͞ ̉̈́ͨ̀ͬ͝͏͏͚o̢̥̞͌͋͋͋̀f̷ͫ̌ͪ̇͠͏͈̹̭ ̶̮̥͖̳͇̰̫̄̌͟a̶͕͍̤̹ͬ͒̽̔̓̂̕ ̤͉͍͈͐̂̆̄ͫ̒͒͐̚͜ř̙̘̝̮̩̣́ͪͮ̈́̔ͪ͞e̵̛͓̘͈͔̍ͥ̿̓͂ͧ̑͑ͭͅǻ͕̠̃ͪ̍ľ̨̮̼͓̻͖̰̯̰ͫ̇͟ͅ ̦͔͖ͧ͗͑̋a̸̲̩ͨ́͘l̵̘̲͎̙̳̦͆̇̐̐̾͊ͣ͜ͅl̶̢̤̦̠̙̙̪̹ͮ̆ͬ̐̈́̃i̹̳͈̗͈̙ͬ͠a̹͉͚̎ͥͅnͮͤ̚҉͉̪̮̹̝͓̻c̓͗̓ͣ̒͊҉̟̘͔̤̯̜̖͙e̦̯̝ͤͤͥ̓͟͡.̜͖̣̗̹̗̲̓͗ ̶̧͖̖̖̳̺̟̏͆̈̋ͦ̾ͤ͛Ă̱͇̲̹̥̞͕̾͐̂ͧͪ͗͞h͍̞͇̯͇͍̼͎̋̍͑̅ͫͣ̎ͯ͟a̸̡͔̪̬̠͓̣̟ͭͥͭ͗̒͂ͬ̚h͒̐ͪͬ̄̔̂̄͠͏̲̺̭ͅa͋̓҉̞̯͙h̭͎̮͓̰̤̮͉̃̊̊̔ͨͅȁ̮̱̺̬̹͟h̷̺̣̹͓̩ͩa̶͔̼̭̬ͧ̔ͨ̓̓ͧ́͐̕͠ͅh̷̶̢̗̪̉ḁ̘̫̈́̈ͩ͂̍ͯ͝͠ͅh̞̼͎̝̩̻̭̺̓ͩ̀̾ͪ̔ą̭͇͚͉̣̉ͨ̐̿̉̅h̡͖̰̭̘͈̔ͨ̃̋ͯ͂̕ͅa̷̩̜̼͚̜̽ͬ̒ͮ́͂ͣ͘!̸̛̲̲̹͖̺̙ͮ̓͗̑ͮ̿̎"̧̖͔̞̥͇͖͚̃͋ͦ̀̒  
̰͇̲̆̈́̎͌̐͠͝  
̵̸͓̝ͪ͗ͩD̶̵̘͈̬̉̇̓̐o͓̼̟͖̫͕̹ͫ͂̃ ̤̬͎͔͙̘̬̞̃ͥͯ̉̀ͭ͘͡y̶̵̤̘̗̗̬̙ͦ͗̅́͋ͯ̈́̔̃͜o̧̮̥̘͙̣͖ͤ̍̔̂ͨ̀̄ṵ̳̱̗̞͔̠͖͕͛̃͛͟͡ ̤͖̳̻̝̖̮̬ͪͪ́f̖̺͙̆̄ͤ̿̇ͦ̈e̡̢̛̱͚̝͕͉̜̙͗͛ͭ͋ȩ̶̛̰͖̦̞͔̤ͧ̎̓͛ͦ͒͛̋̚l͖̗̱̰͖͌̃̊̅̀͜ͅ ̢̝̺̟͕̙͖̪̙̦̐ͥ̈́͆̓͛͜t̶͉͚̤͍͔͉̼̥̥ͭ̊̂̏̀͂͗ͧ̋h̴̛͉̦̥͎̮̟͇̠͗̈́̇̓̈̽̐è̙̗̲̻͚̳ͤ́̍̐ͭ ̴̴̛̻̮̈́̎͒ͦͪ̎͑ͧ̎f̸̢̭̲̫̝̙ͣͪ̃̃̄ͭ͟e̱̣̹͉͇̤̗ͫͣ̏͌̉ͥ̐ͅa̪͕̦̞ͪ̍ͩ̇ͨ̾́̕͠r̢̲̬͇͕͒͒ͦ̆͂͗͐́͐͡ș̵͎̤͈͓͔̎͊̾ ̸͕͍̜̪̮̺̫͉ͫ̄ͧ̃̔̉̓̚͘͞ͅs̨̪̠̻͙̹͇̀ͭ̽̚͜w̡̦̜̙̃̾̓̊̾̋e̱͎̘ͣ͊ͦͧ̽̚͞l̷̮̙̪̼̻ͫͬͤ͛̀̓͗ͧ͠l̷̬͓͕̦͉̘̠̓̆ ̠͍̻̱ͩ̌̃͗ì̮̜ͮ̂͛ͣͫ̃̕n̻͚͈̥̿́ͦͥͪͨͪ̓ͨ͝s̺̱̤̰̈́̊̄ͫ̆͜i̦̺̥̥͕̫ͤ̈̾ͫ̅d͕̭̭́̇ͅe͚͇̗̬̓̋͂ͪ͋ͩ̽̑ ̵̴̜͖̯̭̯̲̹̮̇ͤ̉t̺̥̠̮̤̟̝͒͗͌ͨ͒ͥ́́͘ͅĥ̸̸̛̦̯͚̜̳͎͓͇̣ͦ̃͂̒a̸̷̹̳̻̝̯͔̅ͥͨͭ̀̂ͨ͝ț̣̣̽̅̍ͬͯ̔̀̈́͟ ̨̃̑͐͊͠͏͕̭̗̙̳f̩͖̃͛͊ͨ͞ĭ̧̖̞̹͔͙͖̗͓͐̍̀͢l̺̩͍̱̭͉̣̑͢t̛̤̳͔̫͎̮̝̞̦̾̍͜͡ḥ̢̻̯͉̬̗͚̜ͭ̈̓͘͠y̵̪̼͉̦̮̺ͭ͡ ̧̣͚̝̜̥̩̣ͧ̏ͣ̓͌͐ͥ̏ͩ̀b͍͈͖̬͇̙͔̼͊͋à̴͚̥̔̑ͣ͊g̗̝̭̹̀͆͟ ̶̬̓̏̃̏ǫ̶̸̩̥̭̳̫̳͍ͩ̔ͮ͆ͨ̄ͅf̛͊͆͌̈́͊ͯ͏͍͙ ̦̮̼͔ͮ͞m̶̼̰̣͈̿͛̓ͤ̆̐͢e̬̗̦͓̟͆̋ͪ͢a̳̫̋̉ͬt͚̎́̋̀͂̇̔͊͝͝?̘͈͎ͩ̈ͧ̄͗̒ͤ̾ ͆͌̉ͨ̂͜͏̧͍̣͙̜̣͔͍͍Ẁ̸̨̪̬̲h͔͔̆͋͐ȁ̶̸̡̲̬̫̜̯͍̦͒͛͗̈́t͕̩̮̿ͫ͆̓̌̆̅ͅ ̶͍̞̦̰̫̯͉̯̐ͮ̈͞i̛͍̬̜̤̼̺͑̔ͯ̿ͪ̓́͂ͅͅͅs̛̘͋ͧ̄̕ ̠͇͋͝͠ḻ͖̘̗͔̗͈͍̇̔i̴̢͒̌͏̜͓k̶̵̩̘͉͗̋̎ͨ̂̅ͧ̚eͭ͋͏̰͕̟̼͙̣̠̜́͟ ͂̍̒̓̈҉̯̹͓̳̠̝̯͎͟ẗ̫̣͖ͦͥ̈ͯ͟o̴̪̘͇̬̝̣̰̎ͪͭͪͫ͛̽́ ͕͉̱ͯ́͐͒ͭ͠͞ͅb̰̬̙͍̰̘̳̾̎̑̓ͥ͒̓̚̚e̮͉̟ͥͤͥ̽͑̆͜ ̷̭̟̲̬͕̿ͪ̔͠a̶͉̞̠ͤ̈͊̏ͭ̓͛̀f̟̬͐ͩ͝ṛ̸́̿̆ͅa̠̿ͬͫͮͭ̆̎͘i̵̢̹̟͎̳̥̜͚̲̅ͧ̈͊̏̉ͪͬ͡ḑ͖͖͙ͪͭ̑̒ͩ̍͡?̧̭͓̺̟ͣ̊̈͞ ͧ̿̋ͥ́҉̠̟̖W̴̧̬̺̫̗̩̦̱͕̔ͧͮh̩̗̬̙̥̫ͤ̋͢͜y̴̩͇͓̬͉͔͆ͫ́ͣ̃̄̓̚͘ͅ ̪͉̥̹̞̜͓͓̎ͣ̒ͤ̃̅̍ͥ͡͝d̴͖̹͉̬͓͍ͦ̎o̿ͦ͊ͤ̔̿҉̖͖̲ ͫ̽҉͕̼̰y̠̯͛̈́͟ö̱̬͍̥̦̫̻͎̏ũͪ͌ͨ̇̈́̇ͮ͏̴̯̥̞̗̞͇̜ ̢̫̞̤̺͈͚̭͂͞c̐ͦ̍̽҉̝͙̞̖̗l̵̟̥̊ͣ̂͒i̶̟͉̬̟̰̽̆̕n͎̠̞͊ͭͫ̽̇͛g̷̶̢̝̗̘̩͍̯̺͂ͭͪ̌͛͐̌̓̇ ̶̢̫̖̺̠͔̬̩͈̄t̡̜͈͍̱̳ͮͪͪȏ͉̹̣̟̭̝͉ ̡̲̫̲̮͎̣̠ͤͤͅs̷̪͎͇̝̿u͓͇̟̠̙̰̞͖͗ͤ̓͒̕͜͜c̥̤̥͎̭̜͇̲̒̍̽̉̐ͮ̓̈́͌ͅh̤̝̣͈͓̜̽ͬͫ͗̋͑̊͆͝͝ ̼̯͎̫ͯ̑́͋̽͗̑ͭ́ȧ̷̝̜͍̘̥͈̝̀͑ͩ ̵͖̜̆̇p̛̰̟͎͍̯̘͔͓͔ͦͥ̚a̶͚͚͗͛̆̐͗ͥ̿̈́͡t͍͚̔͌̎̓̈́̾͗ͅḩ̸͔͚̳̘̻͐ͩ͛̐ͭe̵̢̙̰̥̬̻ͥͦ͋͗͜t̷̨̠͍̲̤͎̼͎̾́̊ͦ͠i̸̳̩̲̰̩͚͆̅͐̐̚c̛̳ͬ̏́ ̻͍̳̯ͦ̈́̄͒̇͐͟͠ȩ͍̟̓̋̀̉̾x̫̦̿̉͢i̭̻̱̰̭̋ͅs͕̤͍̲͕̫̲͊͒͐͡͝t̃ͩͯ̆ͥ̚̚҉͇̜̰̰̪̝̭͇͚͘͡ẻ͔̫ͯ͋͡n̂̇̂́̓̄ͬ̃̆҉̵̵̝̗͖c̵̜̮͇̜͛̔̑̈́ẽ̸͎͔̠̲͎̫ͬͯ̿͜?̨͕̗̙͕ͮ͢͡ ̨̢͚̜̟̪ͬ͠Į̴̨͕̱͇͉̳̭̂̏ͭ̈̈́̉̒f͕̦̳̩̘̖̬̗̌̉ͭ̂ͧ̿ ̢̢͍̪̗̫ͯ̐͗̊ͨ̃̂y̻͙̌oͨ̍͆ͨͪ̍͏̧͙̣̰̗̟̣̱u̵̞̝̥̥̻̳̦ͣ̌ͣͦ ͓̜̣̻͙ͮ̅ͧ͊̀͒̅̐͘͠c͎̮̺̠̩̜ͯ͊ͩ̋̌͐̕͜ő͓͙̳̅̑̀ͬͅu̗͈̳ͪͪ̉̚lͣ̿̓ͭ҉̰̠̮͎̺̟̬͇͞͞d̴̼̼̯̤̼̼̮͖̘̏̓͊̌̃͝ ̮̱͙̱̼̞̻̞̓͂̆̽ͤ̔̓͆o̢̦͎̲̥̱̺̗̓̔̓́ͧ̾͟ǹͤ͛̆͏̣͓̟̹͉̝͜l̡̗̜̥̟̺̅̓̉̓ͭ̍̑̂y̳̜̖̘̜̼̅ͨ̆ͯ̇̓̃͡͡ ̡̥͈̭͕̩̜ͥ͝ͅf̷͕̩͉̘ͦͬ̀ͨ͜ẻ̡͙̗̥̱̬͕̻̔̊̋͛ͥ͛ͫe͔͕͇̹̫͛͐̌̃͛ͮ͗l̴̺͇ͮ͊̀ ̙͓̞͉̘̣̯̋̍̈ͤ̃̀̑̀͡ǎ̶̡̳̤ ̙͉̪̮̂ͪ̀̓͆͛̍̕͞s̗͖̱̘̯͈͒ͬ̐̀ͩp̭͇̦͚̮̘͈̭̈́ͩͦ́͞͝ͅǎ̜̂ͩͭͬͪ͂ͅr͇̮̱̯͓͚̎ͮ̕͠k̗̰͕͙̳̝̰͇͋̌̋ͮ͞ ̤̘̹̪̞̘͎̀ͫͣ͑̃̒͘͢o͉̰ͪ̈̀͟f̸̪͕̳̄̄̾̆ͭ̀̏ ̸̛̪͔̩̭̯ͯ̍̌ͨͅm͖͖͚̭̜̬̺̫̉ͤ̒̈̾y͙͓̥̙̱̟͌̑͗ͯ̍͜ ̨̗͉͖͈͒̉̊͒̌͞͡g̴̢̪͍̪͓̯͍ͮ̏́̿̇͠lͮ̈͊̎҉̴͎͖͕̙̯o͔̟̪͈̩ͤ̓ͫ̔͌̂̆ͬ̃ŕ̷̡̤̳̘̩̤͎̗͉̩͂̄̂͛̾̉̚y̰̭̬̓͆̽ͪͯ̒.̖̩̖͕͇ͯͨ̅ͅͅͅ ̢̣̝̈̈̅ͤ̍̈ͬ̌I̻̰̫̳͆̌ͦ̎̃͂͘ ͖͈̪̤̥̹̿͊͟d̟̓͆͆͊͠e̷͈̳̟͋̀̔̾̋̈́͗̃s̸̩̳ͯṕ̸̬̣̯̥̼̪ͧ͑ͦ͂i̛͖̜̲̹̐ͩͮͤͫ͡s̢̘̤̗͛͗͊e̱̊ͮͫ̓ ̷̹̖̪͔͕́̓́̚͟m̯̣̩͚̩̩͗̐̾͐͗̏ͪ͡y̵̡̻͔͖̤͈͙̟̟͖͊̓̌ͩ͛̕ ̧̲̫ͨͤ̔c̷̯͔͙͎̟̮̄̍ͧ̀͠r̵̘̯̟̟̹̟͓̽̈̂ͮě̶͙̝̺̰̯̞̃̕ͅą͚͆̈̾͋͜ť̼͔͖̗̺̺̌́̃͒i̓͏̩ơ̘̦͚̮̯̽ͤ̋ͣ̍ͭ̏͢n̸͇͙̞̘̳̣̦͕ͩͩ̀̎̏̄̏̕͢s̷̢̞̮̯̿ͦͬ̾ͭͧ̉ͤ,̖̮̻̰̺̱̿̉̓́͐̽ͅ ̵̛̙͔̪̦̼̣̯ͤͬͬ͒̾̄͑͘f̮̱ͣͯ̐͢͡o̶͎͖ͭ̄͛ͯͫ̐ͨr̷̪̺̹̋ͩ͘ ̨̗̮̞͊͗̆ͧ̋̅̚t̵͖̝̥͇͎̮̰̮͗͂͞͞h̸̘̳̦̦̹̺ͩͮͫͨͬ͑̇͒͡e̡̝͙̳̱͑͊̾̑͡ͅy̷͍̠̻̞͊ ̧̪̫̱͉̌̂̽͠ḧ̹̜̣̻̞́̓ͯ͋͟͠a͈̦̫͛͟v̦̈́ͩ̓̑̇̏e̻̟̣͖̖̗̦͓̬ͦ̆̽̏ͪ̅͘͘ ̀̍͏̴̤̯̭̳̻̯͚̩̭f̴̧̳̝̭̠̹̻̰̯ͨͯͭo̹̙̣̹̤̼̫̟̿ͬͯ̈́͑ͨ͛ͩ̔̕r̥ͯͬͥ̚c̘̘̥̓̅̓͌e̴̜̳̗̚͢d͙̮̩̜͓͎ͦ̏̅̈́ͭͮ̽ ̛̲̹̬̩̱̊ͨͥ̄͋ṃ͓̻ͦ̏̆̔͐͂̔e͈̪̺̻̮̅̾͜͝ ̣̮̝̠̎͌́t̠͎̜̹̰͇̝̜͂̆͆͒̈̆̐̇̀̚͞o̳̣̘͚͉̽̾͐̊̔ͪ̈́͟͡͞ͅ ̺͉̼̞͈͚̆̏͋́r͊͆̔̅ͮ̄̀҉͇̭͠ê͚l̤͇̩̘̜̲̒̒̇ͣͯ̋̾̃̾͝y̷͉̝̲̱ͣ̃͆ͦ̍̀̐͟ ̷̹̣͆̇ͧͬ̇́̓ͤȍ̘̻̝̽̈̈́ͣͩ̈n̨̡̥̖͍̼̭̲ͤ̏̋ͪ̚ͅ ̆̀ͥͣ͏͕̪̯̦̝ą̶͓̺̭̦̼̜͉̩̇̄̆ͪ̆̉ͮ͆ ̧̧̯̭̝̭͓̏͐̒͊ͬ̊̔ͪs̵̥̤͇͔̎̇̃ͣ̿̚̕͠p̤̯ͩ̅͛͐e̶̘̝̩ͧͯ̾̀ͅc͙̙̫̦̹̖̦̖ͮ͛͛̽̎k̷̜̝̉ͣͮ̿ͬͯͦͤ͐́͝ ̛̭̳̼̬̤̇ͫͫͩ̓͞s̥͍̲̥̰͎͔̣̾̒ͯ͌̿ͫ͌̔͆u̴͍ͮ́̓̊̔͟͟ͅc̷̷̘̗͍̄̊͑̑͛͌͗͐ͭḩ̨̜̜̳͇̓̉̒̃ ͤ̔̂͌͗ͮ̓̚͏͉͚̘̦a̢̳ͨ̄͘͜s̴̻̯͋̈̈̄̐̀̎̕ ̛̾̽͏̶͚̺y̷̹̰͕̬̦̖ͥ̑͜͢o͕͍̲̓͡ű͐҉͙͈̫̝̥.̪̼̬̳̊ͥ̈́̽͂͒̄̑̕͜͠  
̷̤̱̖̣̮̱̱̝̤̿͂̚  
̛͍̞̪̜͚́̾̾"̢͓̪͈̪̭̬̯̲͗̄̉ͯ̾̃͗I̓ͥͨ̓̓͗ͦͯ͗҉̡͇̳̥̫̟̰̱͡ ̜̠̘̥͕̏ͫ̽̒̈ͦ̈̓ͥ̕͢ͅẖ͔͉̣̝̬̼̆a̽͂ͨ͑͏̵̻̬͞v̧̞̳͍̗̖͚͙̥͋̓ͬ̐ͤ̎́ẻ̸̦̜̙͈̠͌̍̾̐͘͠ ̜͇̱̍̋̂͜w̡̩̳̺͚̯͖͈̝̼ͭe̼̮͂ͪͪ͌͊ͨ͆ͮâ̧̧̳̯̣͇̓̃ͭ̇ͅk̵̢͔̩̻ͪ̆e̮͍ͧ͊̊̐̋ͧ̆ͦ̌̀n̢̺̟̮͖̝̻̯ͧͥ̈́̏̿ͥ̀͡͝e̻̼̯̤̹̞̹̓ͧ̇̾̾ḑ̗͓ͩ̐ͅ ̸̙̳̲̪͊̀͂͗̋͢X̵̰͚̮̘̯̖̂̄ͭ̆͠e̵̷ͫ͏͎̰̲̺̠̭͍̳r̷̬̥̘͉͍̻̂̃͊ͮ̆x̧͈̟ͧ̀̓̓̎ͬ͋͌ḕ̻̩͖̠̪ͨ͂͟͡s̩͔̏̒ͬ͋ͭ̋̚.̵̼̻̠̲̤̅͂ͮ͛̑͋̆ ̶͚̹̣͚̝̘̟͓̙̎̃̈́ͤͥ͟͡Ḯ͍̺̔͌̇ͦ͜ ̵̧̦͉͑͌̾̃̏̏̏̃̆a̡͔͎͇̭͇ͤ̎̈͑ͫ̑͡m̸̼̅ ̟̦ͣͫ̓ͮ͘͟a̿̈͋ͥ̾̓͑͏̶̠̳̻͚͕̩͔͠c̛̫̗̹͕̼͎̪̓̆̓̀ͩͯ̆̌ͣ̕c̶̬̰̬̦͍̲̜̥̋̈ͭe͎̹̙ͫ͗͛̎̇̊͠ś̶͓͎̫̤̪̟̅ͨͯ͌̃s̫̗̥̫͂ͣͥ̚i̲̩͎̲̤͕̟͇ͪ̒́͞n̷̠̣͚̅ͮͨ͊̚͞g̨͓̞̲͇̱̖͖̺̹̃̊ͨ̎̂̉͐̿̕ ̴̻͇̯̞̟ͬͪt͓͐̃ͤ̈́ͩ̓h̛ͯ̉̈́̈ͮͪ̇ͩ͏͉̖̀e̛̘̻̤̺̟̙ͥ͂̎̽̚̚ ̰̰̏̃̍̌̈́̓̿ͯ̀͟p̵̥̼̹ͩ̍ȑ̨̞̫͕̹̜ͣ̂̃i̴̖̖̬̭̞̰̗͉ͤͪ̂̿m̬̗̭̦̙̝̹̦̫̊a̧̝͇͖͕̠̯̳̖̪̔ͫ̒r̡̢͚̭̻̝̖ͤ̈͂͑̎̓y̬̾̉ͭ͋͂͆̀́ ̸̡̭̖̗̩̓ͮ̉̔́ͨͥd͖͔̮̮̭̫̈ͮͨ͆͘ͅa̒̌̑ͮ̈͋͏̩̠͎͙̫͍̭̜͢t̶̴̯̯ͭͣą̪͍̼̬̜̥͊ͮ̆̿̔́ ̯̺̦͚̳̻̯̲̃̈̌̊ḷ̻͙ͪ̒̌̋ͬ͗ͫͥ́ͅo̟͂̂ͬo̡̤̞̺̲͔̙͔ͥ̑̏͗̿̈́͂́ͅp̷̞̂̈́̚.̵̼̟̙ͨ̀̈̾͛͑͛ ͂̽̈͂ͦ̎͏̷̢̤̹͕͇̖Ḯ̷͔̲̲̬̩͆͊ͤ̓ͩ́ ̖͕͕̘̱̩̙ͫ̑̔ͪ̄ą̱͇͚͇ͨͩ̍͝m̩̳̮̹̝̗̩̬̥ͦ͛̉̽͛̑ ̴̧̳͚̝̫̓̿ͬm̸̦̭̦̮̯ͯͨͭ̐ͥ͟͜e̷̸ͤ̎̊͊͑҉̦̫̪̝̰̟̠̜̮r̟̮̫̩͋ͨ̎́̓̀ͅg̶̣͕̳̗̹̮̈́̎̍ͩͯ̀̓͒ͤi̡̭̙͙̺͈͓͙̤̲̿̈́̂ͭ̾ͮ́͘ṇ̻͇͉̍ͤ͂͌ͅg͔̺̣͉̬̋ͤ͑̽̎ͪͤ̏͛ ̸̷̧͓̖̽ͦ̆ͤ̑m̴̨͉͓͖̒̿ͩ̔͌̚̚ẙ̵̵̬̪͔̙͈̞̥͗ͪ͟ ̨̢̯͇͔̠̼͚ͤ̌͋͊̌́͋̀e̅̂͗ͬ҉̯̱͜n̡̝̟͎̠̲̎̏͂͝ͅt͊͆͑̏҉̜i̠͕̫̩̖̐͐̌ͪͧ̈́ͯ̅ͪt̟̣̖͓̥̞̝̜̑̍̃ͦ̒̀̚ẙ͉ͤ͂͆̉͡ ̪͂̓ẇ͙̤̗̯̻̼̫̘̀ͅi͎̬̟͖͎͔̮̭͈̎̓ͧͬ̈́͠ẗ̺̮̲̞̒͑͋ͮ̕h̛͉̾ͭ̓͛̉̊̓̕ ͕̭̥̯͐ͯͫ̚ͅt̝͖͈͇̘̘̃͑̆̎̉͗͆ͧh͕̘̞̝̤̞̝̏͐̿̒́̚ͅè̸̢̲̱̳̩̲͚͎̍̆̌̃ ̱͋̆ͥ̎̕s͓̹̳̙̝͖̿͌̇͛͗͜ͅh̗͇͈̐̃͐̈́͗̓͐̓i̥̱̤͙̥͕̥̹͇ͫ͛̂ͥ̊́ͯͥ͢p̡̨̦͍̯̾́̓͢.̼̎ͧ͋̆̒͞͝ ̛̞͎͈͔̰̺̈̓ͨͩ̂ͭͫM̮͇̟͕͉̖͎̈́̓̕y͕̬͑̃ͭ͋̆͒͊̚͢ ̩̬̥̬͂ͨ̌͛g̶̝̯̭͌̉͡l͖̟͇͖̖͔̠̏ͣ̌ͮ̈́o͇͙̾́͗͐ͭ̑̐͌r͌ͣ͋̌͆ͥ͋̈́͏͕͔͔̼̤͚̠̯͘y͍̲̦̬͖̙̘͛̔͑͐̔͒̃̀́̚ ̠̳̳͍͈̣̩̿̏̅͊̏i̪̫̝͕̟͙͂̿̇ͦ̐̋̽̾͌́́͢s͂͌̒͏͡҉̤ͅ ̶̗̩̎͌̈̈̈̌̓ė͓̺̯͚̻͎̞̞x̯̩͓̹͊ͪ̾͡͝p͕̣̺̔̓́a̙̗͎͈͆ͧ̄̄̓͋̚n̨̨̺̬̄͒̆̿̔̂ͭd̷̦̤͓̺ͯ̋̐̑ͨ͡i͚͍̭̥̜̻ͭ̓̽̽̅͊ͦ̓̀͞n̸͇̟͍̪̩̝̰͖̎g̸̮͖̰̪ͯͬ̋ͫͨͬ̀͞.̼̱̹̊ͦ̓̓̑̏.̸͕̼̫̭̯̱͈̯̄̂͡.̝̦̞̳̪͔̦̝̟̉̔̇̃̀̅ͫ͐̀́ ͙͎͑̈́ͣ̚̕f̼̺̥̮̥̤͔̗ͤ͊ͩ͗͜͢͡ḭ̟̝͇̭̱̟͖̄̐ͬ̇̓ͬ̿̀̚l̥̗̭̻̯͎̈́̋̏ͪ̓͋͂͋͠l̘͈̘̩̠ͬ͛̓i̴̫͍̩̒̈́̔ͦͫ́̇ͩ̿̕̕ň̉̉̇͆͆͋ͪ͏͈͖̺͚̺̪g̱̃͋̉̓ ̯͖̗̯͚̔ͪ͛ͬt̝͙ͫ̔̑͢͟͡ĥ͇̺̗͕̬̻̳̂ͣ̀̍ͭͦ̅́̕ẻ̳̔͡ ̸̭̜̥͖̲͆͞ạ̴͕͂̏ͥ̚͢͠r̶̙̜͓͇̞̻̬̍̾̂͆̈̍ͭͮt̛̯͎͙̥̙͎̻̟̰̾ͫ̽ͤ̂͒̽ͩ̑ȅ͚̖͙͔̺͜ͅȓ̵̞͇̦͔̥̗ͫͥ͋̄ͤ̕i̒͘͏̼̞̝͖̺̖̞̟e͚̭͖̔̍ͯ͡s̶̫̣̱̙̜̠͕͔͚̅̔͊̒ͤ͊̀ ͖͙̯̰̜̙̣̦͍̉̑̓̆̇̚͢o̼̣̮̻̙̝̻͓͛ͪ͛̽̎ͬͪ̌ͅf̱̙̭̞̹͚̟́̋ͤ̾̔̏͢͝ ͫͦͪͪ͏̩̤t̫͓̳̺̽̃͑̚͡h̶̲̤̦͇̲̜͇̙͚̒ͤ̾͛̒ͯͫ̽͜i̴̸̹̫̘͇̜͈̺ͥ̅̆̎̌́͘s̘͙̣̜̫̱̿̂̀ͅ ̞̫̤̩̞͎̩̫ͥͅv̬͓͍̻̻̞̋͋̐͊̍ͥ͠ȩ̯̮̓̇ͧ̽̃̅͋s̐͛̽ͤ͋͒͏̖̝̜s̸̷̮̝̓̈̿͆́͗ͩ̆̀eͪͦͭ͊҉͓̲̗͕͉ͅͅl̩̾ͯͣ̚͝.̼̤͓̎̇͋͛ͤ ̷͈͖͇̤͈̬̫̓͊̓͋͟I͐̐͆҉̵̤͇͢ ̛̞̻̩̩̤̖̹̌̾͡â͙̺̫̠̘̩͔̬̒͑̍ͥ͐̇̚͝m̴͉̲̝̖̻̥ͭ̏̂͋͂̾͊̀͝ͅ ̧͇̖̳ͭ͠ī̢̝̘̿̇͟ͅṋ̯̫ͤ̾́ͨ̇̐ͩ͞͡ ̝͖̪̖͈͈̈́ͯ̓͠cͮͧ͢͏̮͖̤̤̣͎ǭ͇̭̜̘ņ̬̖̘̤̉͒͂̈́͛͑t̀͒́ͭͪͤ̔̋͏̗̦̦̦͙͜ŗ̼͈̗̙̲ͦͨͦ́o̶̼̰͖̪̪̓̇̏̽̚l̴͔̭̳͚̜̱͐̏͊.̸̷̟̇ ̑̈́̂́̓͊̐̀҉̭̬İ͙̞͙̠͉ͤͬ͗̈́̐̈́́̕ͅ ̢͓̬̠̺̓̃ͤͧ̍͑̕͟ǎ̴̾̀̚҉҉̱̫m̳͖̞͉̓͂̅̍̈́̌̄̕͠͡.̢̖̤̙ͤ̆̅̀̃̈́̃̀͡.̸͖͙̗͇̗̦͛͌͂̀.̧̤͍̪͔ͭͮͮ ̨͖̭͚̌̇ͪͤ͢͢n͇̺̫̹̏ͬ̎̄͂̒̄͘o̵̷̯̺͈̣͕̐ͯͭ,̗͎͔̭̰͓̣̘̤̀͆̓ͥ ̷̬̦̉ͮ̌ͩ͠i̢̦̙͇̣͖̺ͩͭͧ̅͌̄͑͌̋͢ẗ͕̭̮̮̝̹͍͋͛̇̄ͅ ̷͖̹͓̫̗͒ͨ̅̚͞i̶̬̘̞̪̘̭̔̅ͥ̄̑́s̶͖͈̻͉͇̬͍ͭͬ͐ͅ ̞̼̘̹ͣ̒͗́͟ḩ̤̲̘͕̮̱̲̃͐̆̀̚ͅo̡̤̳ͫ̒̊ͬ͌̏ͤ̉̕p̳̫̦͖̥̼͖ͬͧ͗͌̑e̖̺̗̭̹ͦ͒̊͐̈́͜͝ͅĺ̗͕͉͎̺̰̪͖͒̋ͣͧ̋̚e̠̭͚̞̳͓ͧ̀͆̒ͮ̏ŝ̵̥̓ͣ̾̂͋̈́š̶ͬ҉͉̙.̥̗͚̈́̃̊ͯͦ́̃̓͝͡.̨̖̞̪͌̐͌͘.̟̘̠̯̭̭͇ͤ͋̈̽͊̇̏ ̶̴̛̫̖̐̅ͯ͛̓ͩ̀͗t̷̟̗̱̞̳͇͇̣̓ͣ̋ͩͭͬ͝h̠̾ͪ̈͂ĕͨ͏͙͓̮̫ͅ ̵͗͊ͣ̽ͭ̐͊҉̩̯̙̯̰̦͍͎c̰͎̟͉͉̎̎͘a̛͎͍̠̗͕̞͉͖̜ͦ̊̍̀ͧn̷̒̌́̈̐ͨ͑̒͏̸̳͍̝̠ͅc̖̲̝̙͉̺͖̆ͪe̋̌͛̄͒̚͢҉̤̮̞̠͔̳̤̱͎r͇̣̬̝̟̰͚̲̈ͨͧ̐ͪ̒̇ͩ͜ ̭͕̫̟̒͆̄͒ͣ̏͗̈́͟ͅh̘̾ͫ̊ͦͨ̄͂̂͜ȧ̧̜͉̖̳̰̏̍ͯ̊ͥ̾͝s̢̠͉͍͖̩̰̭̙ͤ̍̚̕ ͒̕͏̲̥͔͡s̰̟̠̞̓ͅṕ̳̅͌r̛͑̂ͫ̊̄̅̅̓҉̩̖̦͔̳̟̥e̷̯̼̊͆̕a̘̼̭̣͆ͪ̊ͥͥ̌ͅd̠̘̤ͬ͑ͯ͊̽̑̑ ̤̭̞̯͔̓̎͑͂ͪ̔̊̂̌͝ͅt̛̛̳͂ͭͣ̓ͨ͝h̵̬͍ͪͧ̈́̇̆̇̿̓̿̀ŗ̻̜̙̜̯̩͇̮̂̌̔̓ͩ̾ͭ͌͘ͅo̢͇̲̫̘̜͈ͫ̐͐͆ͤ͜ǔ̗̝̦̠̌ͬ̌̋͋͘͞g̹̜̭͎̅ͪ̈ͣ̿ͬ̉̀͞͝h̨̝̰̖̜ͣ̅o̩͚̭͎̪̽ͩ̚ͅǘ͉͉̩͙̗̠͊͜ṫ̢̠̖͕̩̓ ̥̳̖͓͇͍̼̱̮ͤ̽͐̒͋͞͞t̨̼̞̪͙͖̗̱̫̲̑͑͞h̿̄̂̔͗͐̀҉̶͍͇̳̝͔̦͙ĕ̗̱̰̙̓̑ͣ̓͗̆͑̔́ ͧ̆͛ͣ̊͊̍ͦ͝͏̼̫͖̣V̞̦̄ͦͫ̃̃ͤ͝o̟̳̹̫͐̂͆̂͝ņ͓͕̜̭̹͑ͭͭ̉ͧ̄ͩ̚ ̶̬̬̫̫̫̫̅͒͛̍́́̈́͋͋́͜B̙̭̝̥̭͎̺̒͂͞r̩̪̫̪̦̤̦̺͑̿̄̿a͉̯̗̬̞̬͙͚͈͊̃̕͠ủ̸̞̪͚̠̳̼̥͍̏̾̑̃̌ͅn̛̳͇͇̥ͪ͛̓͢.̶̰͌́̅͑̐͝ ̸̠̜̜̹̤̔̐ͯ́̑̄̚̚T͚̻̲̠͖̣͙͊͋̄͋ͩ͊̏̆h̦̦̪̤̦͍̐ͮͮ̀͐̓̄͋́e̹͇͎̱͈̙̺̋̓ͪ͜͟ͅy̙͓̣̯͚ͩ̾ͩ ̵̺͚̘̟̘̘̹̱̒̄ͬ͞ͅf̛̻̩̼͈͓̈́̇̓̆͆͆̎ͅi͍̻̳ͩͫ̍ͯ͜l̟̩̣̊̎ͭ͋́l̙̾͊͑̉̊͛ ̠̻̦̓̋ę̜ͤͧ̄̾̔̋͟v̧̝͔̙̮̏͑̾̅̉ͣ͢ͅȇ̛̛͈̩͖͕̬̱̰͛ͅͅr͖̳̖̪̉͗ͤͮ͐̀̅͟͡y͗ͩ̈́̔̒ͦ҉̙̻̘̟͔̞ͅͅ ̝̤̓ͩ̒̐̉á͈̳̟̺̺̱̐̋ͧ̀͘͠ͅv͓͕̥̘͒̾ͭͩ͛ͫͯ͒̀͠ȃ̘̯͎̺̱̼̺̎͐̽i̷̵̯̯̜͔͖͕̫͖̘͗ͯ̎̋̏͗͡l̞̗̣̼͚̜̺̳͖̎̇ͭ͟͟ǎ̶͖̯͖̤̦̹ͫ͌̑̑ͧ͠b̨̻͓̟͊̓ͩͭͥ͒ͥĺ̵͇̲̰͙͓͗ͮͩe̱͕̥̙̯͍̙̒̄́ ͖̺̘̼͉͈͔̯̖ͯ̍ͦ͡c̱͚̗͆̍r̢̮̰̳͎͙͕̪͕ͧͪ͐ͮ̊͜a̺̒c̝͔̟͐̂̃̀ͅk͈̹̫̹̖͖̖̦͆̓̋ͣ̀́͡͠ ͕̥͓̮̜̻͈͓͑͒̅ͬ́͜a̰̻͕̗̟͚̮ͪ̐ͯͅn̻̫͍̽͐ͮͯ͛͛̅ḑ̙͓͔̀̃ ̳̘͈̍ͩ͛̋̐͜͡ç̛̞͓͍̑̾̃̅̀̊̓ͣ̓̀r̶̢͖̪͙̻̫̹͖͊̂ͧ̃̒͝e̥̣̭̰͈̰͗ͤ̑͆ͮ̔̊͟͢ͅv̢̹̟̤͕̻̭̭̱͂̇͋̊ͅi͔̰̩̩̙ͪ̍̈́̔͋ͧͫc̶̙̜̹̫͍̩͋̔ͬͦ̓e̡ͥ̎̑̇̓ͣ҉̢͕̳̣̰͎̯.̫̱̙̪͇̍̏.̵͙͙̪̭͈͆̎̈̎ͪͤ̆̔.̷͈ͧ͂͊ͣͭ͊ ̸̳̜̻̗̊̾ͤ̋͑́̕ͅť͉̭͎̅͘͞h͒́ͫͯ͒͏̠̙̕͡ͅe̝̯̐̄̌̈ͦỵ̨̫̟͛͢ ̶̸̟̻̬̞̘͖͓̃̅̿́̽o̩͕͉̣̒ṽ̡̱͕͙̹̤̮̞ͧ͑ͤ͗ͣ͌̾ͥ͞͡ͅe̶̍̓ͪͅr̷̛̹̥̬̫̗̭̐̋ͭͯẁ͇͓͍̱͓͕̲̹ͣ͆͗͡hͪ͗̎͊̎͐͏̞̼͙̟̣̰̟͝ë̛̜̱̬̻̹̖̹̲́̊ͦ͊l̹ͣ̈̈m̊̓ͦ̎̄ͩ̚҉͓̲̰̖͚͍͝.̡̰̲̬͇̞̯̻̻ͮ̿̍.̶͉̗̝͓̹͑̐ͬ̾̀̆ͣ̇.̸̛̆ͨͧͩ͏̜͔̪̥̠ ̲̫̹͖̜͉̬͛̃̃̂ͫ͗ͦ̚̕͞t̝̤͇̖̮̦̎́͗̿̆̌̎ͬ̐ͅh͎̭͇͙͔̺̅͒̂̿̋̔͒̓͟ͅȇ̟͙͚͈r̝͍͕͇̉̐̓ͪ̐̕͠͠e̛̗̗̞̰͌ ̶͍̬ͯ̆̏̋i̴̖͂̍̉̆ͪͩs̨͚̥̺̱̱̀͆ͪ͘ ̸̢̖̘̫̜̱͖̼̏̓ͤ̏ͧ͂͂̌͝ņ͈̝̮̮̙̔̍̀o̵̳̭͌̿̆͛̌́ ̷̡̧͙̝̥̹̦̮͓̩̈́̄͆͊̈́̉ͪ̆ŏ̵̫͔̘̰̑ͯͦͪ͞ͅt̛̻̫̂̍̓̈́͐ͬȟ͔̳͈͉̙̱͔̈ͣͣe̟̯̳͍͆ͩͫ́̐ͨ̆͡rͯ͢҉̦͇̲̭ ͇̻͈ͧ̉͝oͫ̋͋̽̅͘͏̶̝̮̠̻̠͔͚ͅp͔͉̺̺̟̥͕͛̍̑̑͒̓͡ṯ̶͚͓ͬi̗͕̤̜̦͔̜͕ͪ͛ǫ̧͇̘͓̗̾ͧ̈́̈́͟n̗̔͂̅ͦͫ̎͆͊̓͘.̶̲̭̭̱̔ͤ́͞"̴̤ͮ̂͊̎̿̎  
̯̭͇̯̹̹̍ͣ  
͇̖̻͗͐ͫ͑͋̓͛́"̛̗͍̼̰̦͙̭͂̀ͥ̅̏̈́ͪ̚͜G̺̫͓̱̤̝͇̃̐́o̴̍̔҉̱͖̞̗͔͍̞̫ȍ̜̱̣͍̟̱̤̃ͤͤ̌ͭd̵̼̖̣̩̼̻̬̈́.͙͎͇̱̒̑͋͒ͅ ̛͍̘̝̬̺̏͟Y̸̨̨͔̳̣̜̭̥͇̎̋̌͋ͬoͣͭ͗ͣ͏̷̛͖͖͕ͅu͊̌̽̇̆̇͂͏̤͔ͅ'ͥ͒ͤ̅ͣ̐ͪ̇҉̞̖͖͇͈v̡̟͍̬̼̜͈̩͐̊̆̉ͦ̊ḛ̡̫͍̜͙̇͌̋ͬ͊̊̒́ͅ ͕͔̻̗̰ͥ̇ͥͨ͜ͅm̱̝̰̲̲͎̈́̃ͩ̌̾̚u͓͗̐͘͝r̴̯̝̩̳̤͉͙̿ͯͪͧ̽̌ͪ͝ḋ̪̬̙͢͝e͔͖̫͚͋͗̍̌̕rͧ̓̇̏͋̔̊҉̥̲e̴̙͙͖̲ͩ͠d͖̣̳͉̻͎̃͆ͥ̓͐̐ͩͮ ̡̖̣̲̹̂ͫ̓̈ͪ̊͡t̖̓̇͑ͯͩ͋ͥh̪̲͓̄̑͘e̢̍̔̈́͂ͨ͏̭̩̜ͅì̳͖͖̮̘̤̩͙̊ͧ́̓͋̌ͣ͡r̹͎͒͆̒͗̒ ͚̳͉͙̪̅̊̕͜͝ͅy̵͈̱ͭ͜o͚͋̎̋́ų̵̹̣̼̝͎ͩͧͥͬ̈́ͫͮͮ̚n̵̠̝̫̺͈ͮͪ̓ͦͤ̓͛̚g̖͖͎̙͉͇͐ͦ̎́͊͌̇̔̑ ̭̠͇͚͒ͫ̑͟ȧ̠̻͈͕͚̬̇ͬ͞ͅͅn̛̰̝̯̞̅̎͋ͣ̎̈́̀̕d̵̛͕̟̫͖̦̤ͧ͑͊͊̍͐̐ ̧̧̹̞̯̜̙̮͍ͣ̃ͮ̋͐̎͠p̦͇̬̦̹͐̉ͥr̦͂͐̽ͅê̴͖̦̭̖̘̪̔͆͛̇͊͑̇̈́͘v͍̰͓͍̳͓̾͆͂̔̈́͝e̸͍̰̗̜͔̗͍͓͛ͣͯ͊͠ṉ͔ͮ͂͘t̥͍̦̫̣͔͒͌͛͢͠ḙ̰̽ͣ̏ͨd̛͍̝̮ͧͦ̔͌̃̆͐̅ ̶͍̭̠̻̲̯̒̌ͬ̊̏̊̀ṭ̲̗̳̖̤͍͑̔ͯ̔ͦͤ͑̕ḥ̛̣̲̰͖̻̱̩͒͋̚͞ę̥̻͎͚͈͎̙ͫ̿ͦ̏ͧî͎̝̩̬͔̬͉̓ͥ̆̾̑ͣͤͤͅr̜̯͈̪̗ͧ͋̒̃́͐̈̽̎̕ ̷̵̻̪̯̪͇̟̩̑̑̐̑͊͋̊͋̿̕e̞̞̱̠͎͔̯͔ͫ̌̾̅͗ͭ̒ş̵̡̻̝̱̥̏̎ͥ̀ͨ͑̚c̷͎̱͊͒́̚a̯͇̫̮̤̔̾ͦ̉͢p̪̤͈̙͊͊e̷̗̙͚̞̝̟͚̽ͮ̆͐͜.̦̬̼̣̗ͦ̏̅͐͌̾͢͡"̷̸̳̰̮̜̠̭̎͊̇͢

Only to cut back to normal again.

"Uh... what just happened?" asked Una, who now had a bit of a headache.

00-Em shrugged. "Well, it doesn't really matter what's in the message," he said, his tone laconic. "I'm only using the opportunity to hit them with tailored computer viruses. If they're stupid enough to accept a transmission, well, they might as well say 'Oh, come on, 00-Em A9, here's control over all my systems. Why not just look after them for me, while I draw this pistol, place it against my cerebral cortex, and pull the trigger?'" He sniffed. "Hence, I might as well cram in as much informational content, and in this case, well, if they were foolish enough to employ someone who might suffer an epileptic fit from exposure to this kind of content, it works."

"Cunning," his sister said, with a smile. "I approve."

Ivy crossed her arms, pouting. "You're doin' it wrong!" she protested. "Come on, Una, make 'em do it _properly_!"

"Well, if we're going to do something like this," Duae interjected, with a faint smirk, "hmm... yep, that totally works."

The lights faded again. And the beating, the beating of distant drums and distant feet, systematic, synthetic, and ordered. Smoke wafted around, lit in purple and blue, moving as if shifted by unseen things.

"They were made by their Momma,  
They were taken by bad people,  
And they escaped."

Two pairs of red eyes, glowing in the darkness. Two pale faces.

"They're kinda a bit creepy, and use long words all the time.  
00-Em A9: the brother... he's kinda cute and smart, and doesn't like being called a girl.  
02-Ef A9: the sister. Cold, controlled... also, she likes dresses and books and stuff.  
They were lookin' for their Momma. And now they know that they're our cousins, so they know where she is.

And they have a plan. They aa~always have a plan."

"I like it," 00-Em said, brightly. "It needs a little bit of work on some of the dialogue, but, yes, I like it. Plus, that smoke... data heavy! It means I can load it with hostile attack programmes, and moreover, if they're watching this, they might miss the only chance they have to avoid the attack. Duae, you're a genius!"

"Thanks!" Duae replied, with a wide grin. "I totally am."

"But where's the brightness and happiness and sparkles!" Ivy protested, looking like she was on the verge of tears. "You gotta have sparkles!"

Una frowned. "Listen, Duae, how 'bout you not steal it from your fav..."

"I've got another one!" the blue-haired girl said, as the light dimmed again.

"It is the early years of the twenty-first century..."

"Duae!" interrupted her elder sister. "Stop stealin' them from your sci-fi stuff."

As it so happened, Duae was a massive fan of science fiction. A massive fan of _certain kinds_ of science fiction. Giant robots, the triumph of love and peace over all, a rejection of any form of transhumanism in the name of the supremacy of the human spirit; all these things were anathema to her tastes. If she wanted that kind of thing, she could talk to Daddy or the Aunties. No, she liked pre-Impact hard science fiction best; the kind where morally ambiguous factions did strange things to each other and treated their bodies as equipment, although she would accept anything as long as it was sufficiently gritty and didn't treat AIs as if they were worthless slaves. Which was just _insulting_.

Duae Ayanami-Gogoki, in fact, read and watched the genre as a form of escapism.

And as a source of ideas, of course. But until she could build ships tens of kilometres in length, able to accelerate at several Gs for years as to take advantage of relativistic time dilation (or, if she had access to FTL, try to see if she could break causality), build a form of nanoscopic machine goo which could host her intellect, and go exploring the universe, it was mostly escapism. Even if she did really want to be able to turn a sun into a giant flamethrower some day.

Perhaps it was for this reason that she pouted slightly. "Well... bah. Like to see you do better."

Una blinked. "Um... well." She paused, face crinkled up in concentration. "Um."

"You can't, can you! Just 'cause I got 'magination!"

She bowed her head. "Sorry, Duae. I didn't mean to insult your stuff, you know."

Her little sister nodded her head, stiffly. "It's 'kay." She relaxed slightly. "'Kay. But, still..."

"Trying to _concentrate_ here," 02-Ef said, through gritted teeth. "Please... take your discussion of ridiculous transformation sequences and the like to a closed channel, so I can try to keep my attention on keeping a untested prototype working." She sighed, and smiled broadly. "Plus, we will be in visual range of the Baraqielim spread in two hours and..."

"One hour and forty three minutes, two seconds, as of the start of this sentence, taking into account the estimated spread from forwards observation units," corrected her brother.

"Right. Not long now," she said, softly.

...


	14. Chapter 13: Execution

**Neon Gene****sis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 13: Execution**

* * *

...

* * *

The first change was the way that the red dust of Australia began to fade to grey, as glimmering specks of crystal drained the colour from everything around them. The second was the faint electrical corona that played and flickered over the ground. And then the crystalline spires began to grow.

"We have now entered the Baraqielim Zone," 00-Em intoned, staring down at the convoy from the vantage point of the sensors. It would be insensitive to point out that he had added a slight reverb to his voice, for that statement, as to make it sound more sinister.

Insensitive, but true.

"Coo~ooool," Ivy remarked, the horde of her shells scrabbling over the outside of the aircraft staring down. "It's all sparkly and pretty." In the simulation, her ego-image shrugged. "Bet it'll be real pretty when we kill 'em." She paused. "I'm gonna make a necklace from them," she declared, emphatically. "And one for Momma. As a present."

"No fair! I was gonna do that!" Tres protested.

"I said it first, so... nyah!"

"Well... then I'm gonna make Daddy's one!" Tres folded her arms. "An' it'll be bigger, too!"

"Well, duh!" Duae interjected. "Daddy _is_ bigger!"

"Look, right," Una stated. "We can all make something for Momma and Daddy together, and we can put all our names on it an' stuff. And then make 'em other presents, too, but we gotta make one together."

"Not fair!" Tres said, pointing an accusatory finger. "You're just sayin' that 'cause your name gets to go at the top of the gift tag thing, 'cause you're oldest."

Una blushed. "Am not!" she protested.

"Are too."

"Trying. To. Maintain. Synchronisation. With. Angelic. War. Machine," 02-Ef said, through gritted teeth. "Stop bickering in the shared channel. Brother, tell them to cease their discussion of jewellery!"

The little boy blinked, and looked up from the floating model of a tiara cast in blue-grey crystal he was working on. "What?" he asked. "I wasn't... oh." The tiara vanished. "Yes, yes, stop fighting," he said, two-thirds-heartedly. "Surely you can devise a fair system based upon some kind of random number generation spread. Possibly based upon radioisotope decay. Or cosmic-background radiation noise." He paused.

The three Reego shuffled their feet. "But..." began Duae.

"... we gotta know who's the favourite," Una explained.

"Wait a moment, where's Ivy?" added Tres.

"Wait, what?" 00-Em blinked, his gaze flickering from readout to externally mounted camera to readout. "Oh, I see. We've dropped the honey badgers. She was meant to check if... luckily, I had expected _Ivy_ to do this, and thus planned around it."

"Yep. Looks like Operation Let's Kill All The Blue Crystal Things is startin'."

The boy scowled. "Its name is _Operation Gemcutter_, Tres."

"Yeah, well she's gettin' all the points!"

* * *

...

* * *

A mass of black specks filled the sky, tiny shapes against the blue and grey of the heavens. The Baraqielim spreading across the surface of the earth did not look up, because the first wave was largely non-sapient; the equivalent of plant-life for the Lilim ecosystem.

Hence they did not, and largely _could_ not see the armoured honey badgers, tentacles and bolted-on rocket launchers primed and ready, falling from the heavens, nor could they detect the little-girl robots, themselves festooned in weaponry, riding each of the badgers.

White blossomed in the sky, as spider-silk parachutes opened, slowing the descent, before they were cut away for the final drop. Like cherry blossoms, they drifted free, dove-like shapes flapping across the heavens.

"Firin' mah retros!" Ivy yelled, as jets of flame, so hot that their blue-white was almost invisible, licked down at the ground, not coincidentally setting what organic material that remained in the area on fire, and fusing and cracking the blue-grey crystal in the vicinity.

From hundreds of impact craters across the front of the Baraqielim-zone, honey badgers burst forth, maws snarling, tentacled battle armour originally designed for bears fully functional. The bright neon pink highlights, a legacy of the fact that it was Aunty Kiko's favourite colour, made them not-one-bit less scary.

"Sic 'em," the little girl robots yelled in synch, as a streak of rockets opened up, targeting the crystalline trees already starting to grow, and the badgers began their systematic xenocide of the Baraqiel-born ecosystem.

And everything else that moved or got in their way, of course.

* * *

...

* * *

Bruised, battered, one arm broken, Inspector Obeur Zilicaet looked over the survivors from the drop. There were fewer that he would have liked. The wind-currents had been hellish on the way down, with several discrete, and discreet, turbulent levels. Too many of the men and women had been blown far off course, and missed the relatively safe area. If they were lucky, they wouldn't have impaled themselves on the razor-sharp spikes of the crystalline entities, which merely left them the dubious mercy of trying to survive, lost, in an alien ecosystem, and one which was in Australia above that.

"Sir?" asked the lieutenant, his Russian accent thick. "What now?"

"We need to see if we can communicate with the Baraqielim," the man said out loud, as if thinking to himself. "Sapience... what clues of sapience can we find?"

The Russian looked around, at the effective forest... no, jungle of crystal rising from the ground. "I can't see any," he said.

"I know." The Inspector sighed. "We took a bearing from the path of the sky island, so we know what way is out. We should head that way, and see if there's anything else along the way. We might as well try to save ourselves, if it doesn't interact with trying to save the world from..." he waved his arm around him, "... all of this."

There were a few mutterings of discontent from the ranks of oft-injured men and women, but only a few. Major Do had told them to follow his orders "unless, you know, he's doin' stuff which is really, really dumb", and without exception, they took it as an article of faith that she would survive whatever came to pass, and, in her own words "fuck up the shit" of anyone who didn't do what she said.

"Well, looking at the compass, we need to head... that... way..." the man trailed off, as movement caught his eye.

Out of the jungle-thick crystal forest, floated something vaguely cross-shaped, idly scanning around. It turned to stare at the humans, and let out a wet-sounding keen.

There were gasps among the soldiers, and a mass of rapidly raised rifles. Because, for all the blue-grey-crystalness of the floating shape, the tattered clothes and patches of infected and burned-looking skin that could be seen were enough to tell them that this... this _thing_ had once been a man. Deformed from its muscles and the way that Baraqielian crystal sprouted forth from its bones and choked its veins, it hung in the air, the bloated things that had once been feet not touching the ground. Its head hung limp, eyes open and aware, yet it seemed not to be breathing.

Lieutenant Ivanovitch mouthed something obscene in Russian.

"No!" Inspector Zilicaet said, raising one hand. "It's human... but it's also of the Baraqielim. It's... it's not a Nephilim, not like Subjects Sigma or Kappa, and yet it's both human and Angelic. If we can just talk to it... think! It's a possible emissary." He paused. "That means, 'lower your guns, we're not shooting it right now'," he added, a little caustically, when the soldiers didn't move.

"With respect, no," said the Lieutenant.

"Why?"

"You're 'doin' stuff which is really, really dumb'."

"That's... but...fine." The Inspector sighed, and turned to face the once-man crucified by crystal, who, now that he looked closer, was probably a woman, by his best guess. The growths made it hard to tell. "Hello!" he said, slowly, his voice modulated as to sound peaceful. "Hello! We want to talk! We. Want. To. Talk. With. You."

The cross-shaped composite being ignored him.

The man switched to Mandarin, and then to French, taking a detour into German and Spanish, all to no effect.

"Sir. I don't think it's listening."

"But the head's intact! It... she...he... they should be able to hear... ah, unless the growths have made them deaf!" The man paused, as there wasn't any response. With a note, he saw that the other man was pointing upwards.

The vapour trails of multiple planes could be seen overhead, and following them, the louder roar of VTOL engines, much lower.

"My eyes can see them; I have a zoom function," said one bulbous-helmeted woman with a sergeant's stripes, a high calibre rifle clutched in her arms. "They're... they're... well, they look like they used to be standard NHIS-brand aircraft, but they've been really heavily modified. Blue/Green/Red dots on them, too. Obvious."

"Are you sure," Obeur asked, squinting at the distant dots he could only just see.

"Sir, I'm a sniper. Trust me on this." The woman paused. "And they're dropping something... not bombs... spiders? Really?"

"Really?"

"Well, unless I have some kind of virus in my systems which is corrupting them and feeding me false sensory data... yeah. Spiders." The woman swallowed. "And massively... like, really massive scorpions. With... um, with parachutes."

There was an explosion in the distance, and one of the vast, tree-like spires, hundreds of metres tall, shattered and fell, kicking up a colossal dust cloud which glimmered in the twilight. The wave of pressure passed the humans, kicking up clouds of grey dust as it went and leaving Obeur to grope for his helmet in the sudden, choking darkness.

"Okay, maybe some of them were bombs," she admitted. "Look sharp; visibility's down, so we better be careful."

But around them, the ecosystem screamed, high pitched, resonant, and almost melodic. And the predators emerged.

* * *

...

* * *

"Firin' one! Firin'"

The weapon recoiled, and the entire plane jolted sideways.

"Miss." The tone was impassive. "Firing data loaded to simulator... yes, as I thought. The propellant for these shells is poor quality."

"Well, you try makin' it with stuff you find in home depots which haven't had people checkin' the stuff in them for... like, _ages_!"

"Oh, I am quite aware. But, nevertheless, we must accept that there is an unavoidable uncertainty in our initial velocity, and hence in the projected path of the weapons," said the little boy, rubbing his cheek with one hand.

Duae pouted. "See... this is why normal weapons suck. Everything's waa~aaay cleaner when you've just got magnets and wow-that's-big railguns and pweem-lasers-an'-charged-particle stuff. Or smart-munitions... oooh! There's an idea! Can we stick chips in the larger shells, and reconfigure those fins from the spares for the drones to allow them to change the way they're goin' when they're moving!"

00-Em leaned forwards. "Don't we need them for the... well, for the drones?"

"Yeah, but that's less important than blowin' up stuff now. We'll just need a dumb AI to interpret the feed from the plane, and then we can have 'em adjust their way as they go."

"And we don't actually have time to properly beta-test the... hmm, I estimate that we'd only need an expert system for this, not even delta-level. But still, we don't actually need them, when we can account for it, and if we can't test them..."

"Pah! Who need's beta-testin', when you're just this good?" Duae said, with a smirk.

The little boy glared at her. "We can't even do alpha-testing," he stated. "No time."

"Well, if we ree~eeally need a dumb AI, I guess there's always Ivy," the Reego added.

The little boy frowned, and looked around. Given that no wrath of Una descended, he was probably safe. "... I am glad it was you who said that," he remarked.

"Well... duu~uuuh. She's _my_ little sister. That means I get to say true things 'bout her."

The Keiworu grunted, and turned away, manipulator arms in a puppeted drone extending, as he pulled a section of what used to be a cathode ray tube from a television apart.

Duae winced. "Sorry," she muttered, shuffling all four feet on the floor. "How... how's stuff goin' with your sister?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"That badly?"

"I. Don't. Want. To. Talk. About. It."

* * *

...

* * *

With a reflexive scan of the others, to check that they wouldn't notice, Una opened a private communications channel to Cainarchonite Unit 00, her unnecessary breath catching slightly until the other end registered as secured. Leaning slightly, she spawned an avatar and poked her head through the link.

"Heee~e~ey," she said, red eyes blinking. "Just checkin' up on you."

"I'm fine, Una," 02-Ef said, jaw locked, breath rate controlled. Her face was screwed up in concentration.

"Yep, well..." the Reego stared at the other girl, who had clad her image in a very dark blue, almost black, plug suit, trimmed with grey. And then promptly added frills and a skirt to the design, and pinned a veil to the entirely unnecessary A10 clips. "Look... we're almost through, but your brother won't let us move on until we've set up a proper relay network, an' taken out those ree~eeally tall crystal tree things that are sparking tonnes."

"Yes. I know." 02-Ef took a deep breath. "He thinks it is necessary. I do not have the spare runtime to devote to examining his operational instructions further. I will trust him." She smiled, faintly. "He is my older brother, after all."

"Yep. Yep."

There was a slightly awkward pause.

"What does it feel like?" Una asked, curiously. "I mean, Momma pilots Daddy, but that's not ree~eeally the same. What it's like being both pilot and control-thingie?"

The grey-haired girl shook her head. "I've cross-linked the sensory input from the Cainarchonite, and for both the pilot and the clone of the father-entity," she said, a glum note entering her voice. "At the moment... I'm, at the soul-level, really two people, who just happen to be getting all the same feeds into their heads which I made sure started in the same initial conditions, so they're acting the same. The synchronisation readings on the internal monitors in the pilot's plug are _interesting_. The brain of the pilot, especially, isn't designed to cope with the input of two sets of each sensory organ, so I've outsourced as much of my cognition to the internal systems of the Unit as I can." The girl paused. "The father-entity... he isn't human. It feels so different."

"Oh no," the Reego said, flatly. "Someone's Daddy isn't human. Oh no. Whatever should we do?"

"Point taken."

"And, oh no again. Guess what! Our Mommas aren't human, ya know. Plus... oh wait! We're not human! Who'da thought it? Amazing, that, you know, that, oh, we're not human plus neither are our parents."

"You can be very sarcastic, sometimes."

"I can? Thanks, 02-Ef! I woulda stopped if I hadn't got your permission!"

02-Ef rolled her eyes. "That was merely an attempt to qualitatively explain some of the differences to you. And I'm pretty sure you weren't this sarcastic when we first met you. Go break some Baraqielim. That should cheer you up."

"Can't." There was almost a little bit of sullenness in the voice. "Someone's gotta keep all the planes flying. Not repair... actually piloting. And 'cause of stuff, my bodies haven't been gettin' all the recent upgrades 'cause I've been having to keep them lookin' human for social stuff, so I got landed on pilot duty mostly, and Duae and your brother are still arguing and tinkering with the energy weapon thingies while we're flying and they're both being even more boo~oooring."

"Oh." The little girl's mouth was a tiny pink circle. "You're bored."

"Ree~eeally bored, yep. And waa~aaay behind on killing points, and I just know that Tres is gonna be smug 'bout it." Una folded her arms. "Being the oldest sucks," she added. "An'... an' I wish Momma and Daddy were here. They could do this properly. With big explosions and drillin' and plasma explosions... and then they could take us and the refugees back." The girl sighed. "It's stopped bein' so fun in Australia. I just want Momma and Daddy."

"I wish Mother was here, too," 02-Ef said, softly.

There was a second silence; less awkward, more melancholy.

"So~ooo, it's okay? With you?"

"I am, as I mentioned, trying to pilot a prototype Angelic war machine, doing things that I am fairly sure that Mother never meant for me to be able to do." 02-Ef tilted her head slightly. "She may have. I do not know. Mother is much more intelligent than us, after all. I know that she'd be able to fix us, and I'm also sure she wouldn't have a problem with handling this. But, yes, Una." The grey-haired girl blinked. "I am having problems, but they are under control. That is what you wanted to know, correct?"

"Hmm." Una's word was precise, almost sweet-sounding. "Well... that's kinda done, and I better let you concentrate, so, just... _remember our deal_, 'kay?"

Two red eyes, glowing faintly, flicked from left to right. "I will."

"Good. You better."

* * *

...

* * *

The tramp of the spiders through the crystal forest was rigid and systematic. Advancing almost as a shield-wall, with the faraday-cage-armoured ones in front and around the edges to absorb the lightning bolts thrown at them by the ecosystem, they crushed everything in their path. Already, webs were being thrown up between the shattered husks of the crystal spires, and were becoming laden down with the smaller Baraqielim, snagged on the sticky material. The air was thick with blackpowder smoke, too, as Tres had introduced primitive firearms to them. And when you were dealing with spiders the size of an elephant, the definition of "small arms" was somewhat expanded. Especially when there were smaller breeds to do the loading, allowing them to keep up an impressive rate of fire.

"Chitter!" reported one red-spotted spider, its face painted white in a grotesque mimicry of its god. "Chit~ter ch~itter, chittee~eeeer! Gree~esh Tres!"

The little girl robot, clad in rich red-from-blood robes and wearing a golden tiara, lounging on top of one of the scorpions, nodded once. "Gritte~eeresh," she acknowledged, standing up and discarding the robe in a flurry of cloth, to reveal her favoured trenchcoat-and-knives combo. She kept the crown, though, as closer inspection revealed that it was merely made of more knives. With a few careful steps, and a barked command, the scorpion's tail hurled her, as an impromptu catapult, up into the air.

She came down blades first, smashing through the delicate wireframe of a house-sized Baraqielim, severing several important connections in the ten metre wide trapezohedron, and riding the corpse back down to Earth, with a terrible shattering noise.

Tres smiled. The bits of this one would make an excellent necklace for Daddy.

"Are you quite done?" 00-Em asked, a slight sarcastic twist in his voice. "We need more relay masts, and you are _meant_ to be setting up a relay mast so that we can have a margin of error on satellite adjustments."

"Keep your hat on, I'm doin' it."

"I'm not wearing a hat. And this is important. I have the timetable carefully set out to manage our fuel consumption. It's already a one-way trip for most of the planes, even with the 'Tentacletron' for refuelling, and the longer you take gettin'..." he blinked, "... getting this relay mast set up, the chance increases that we will begin to lose craft before getting there."

The girl grinned. "You said 'gettin'', didn't you?" she asked, voice lilting. "Yaa~aaay, my little cousin is startin' to talk like us."

"I... I... it was a slip of the tongue," 00-Em said hastily. "And this is no time for this kind of thing. And I'm rather... look, have you got it done yet, or not?"

One mechanical eye on the remote-puppeted shell zoomed, focussed, adjusted its aperture. "And it's done," Tres said, watching as a cluster of armoured spiders, on top of one of the vast trees together pushed the pole to the vertical. Silhouetted against the setting sun along with its arachnid assistants, the mast rose, wobbled, stabilised, and was anchored.

Naturally, this having been designed by the Reego, it also doubled as a flag-pole. The blue-and-green banner, a single red eye in the centre, flapped in the breeze. Proudly, Tres stared at it, as the stomp of her legions, the bark of their crude blackpowder weapons, the exaltations of their prayers to her, and, importantly, the shattering of crystal as they scythed through the wildlife. 02-Ef had told her that, actually, the reason that her spiders and scorpions were like they were was because of the contamination from Baraqiel and those bits of ADAM which had been blasted from Antartica to Australia, uplifting and mutating them, making them no-longer purely of the Lilim.

Tres didn't care.

They were _hers_. And they were doing it well.

"Yes, well done. Now, perhaps you could go set up another one. Just maybe? If you don't mind."

"There's no need to be soo~ooo sarcastic."

"I really think there is."

Tres sniffed. "You would. Just remember," she added, grinning, "I know you can talk like us, now."

* * *

...

* * *

Gunfire rattled, as the GEHIRN forces tried for an organised retreat. Tried, and failed. Not only did they not have anywhere to retreat to, but it seemed like the entire ecosystem was attacking them.

"Move on, move on," yelled one soldier, waving his arm towards a rocky outcropping which seemed more bare of the crystal lifeforms than other places. "Hurry, hurry, h..." His instructions were broken by a scream, as something vast and angular tore its way out of the ground, two mantis-like claws of refractive blue-grey digging into the ground as the beast levered its way out.

"Firing one!"

There was a backwash of flame from one of the soldiers, and a missile streaked out, faster than the eye could see, to break against the arm. There was a noise like ten thousand breaking glasses as hairline fractures painted their way across the limb, and the scream of pain from the Baraqielim was deafening.

The crystalline claw, crackling with brightness along the breaks, but still intact, lashed out, and tore the firer in half, the red of haemoglobin painted across the now-greying sand. And a vast thing, a lop-sided pyramid, pulled itself out of the pit, its claw-like limbs holding its bulk up. Another missile hit the damaged limb, and shattered it, even as the thundercrack-bursts of weak, yet near relentless, bolts of lightning began to scythe through the ranks of the cyborgs.

Inspector Obeur Zilicaet merely kept his head down, and ran like his life depended on it.

And, oh, serendipity, it did.

* * *

...

* * *

Squatting down by the sandpit-like rendition of the topography of Australia, 00-Em A9 paused, and leant his chin on his steepled fingers. The little simulated figures were pushing ever onwards, and letting his mind refocus, he switched perspective, seeing every individual sensory feed separately.

It was going well. They were a red-barb into the mess of the Baraqielimised territory. A flick, and he could see the devastated and smashed lands behind the first main advance of Ivy, even as it fractured and both she and the honey badgers got distracted with the killing. Tres was following before and ahead of that wave, mopping up large structures, and targeting any she could find ahead. And the destruction of the Baraqielim towers seemed to be having a notable effect; as he suspected, the potential difference that the crystal spires were generating was affecting the climate, and somehow increasing the reproductive rate of the Angelic lifeforms. Cloud was clearing along their line of advance, and the Baraqielim were not regrowing quickly enough.

His attention flicked to the main convoy, and there he frowned. They still weren't moving fast enough. Fuel and battery life was finite, and it would just be embarrassing if the attack force shut down because it ran out of either. Here, the Cainarchonite was a blessing, because it was fitted with a N2 reactor, and so it worked as a mobile base, his sister providing power for the other units.

He sighed. Yes. His sister. He was worried about her. Of course, he had been worried about her for a long time, worried about her ever since she'd managed to get him working against after what SEELE had done, but... this was different. She was acting oddly. And he really, really just wanted to shut himself away with her, in a sealed, safe network, and hide from the world, hide from everything that had happened.

But once they'd killed the Angel, once everything was done here, they'd be going back to Tokyo-3... well, they'd be going there for the first time, and Mother was there, and the rest of the family who he'd discovered that he had. And maybe some of the others, from other batches, had escaped too; maybe they'd made their way to Mother.

He blinked back tears, as he summoned a small, virtual model. Ten small children, their hair colours encompassing the entire blue-grey spectrum, sat around a taller, blue-haired figure. The A9s, with Mother. Through tear-filled eyes, he stared at himself, subjectively almost a year ago, hand in hand with a little girl, her blue hair tied up in pigtails, lips curled up slightly at the edges.

"00-Ef," he muttered to himself. "I wish..."

No, this new family wouldn't be a replacement for them. Even if there were other children who had escaped SEELE, it wouldn't be them... his eyes flicked over to the younger 02-Ef, standing next to her grey-haired twin. It wouldn't be the same again.

But it might be something new. Not a replacement, but an alteration.

And, he smiled, then maybe they could do something as a family. Like hunting down and eliminating all the cyborgs susceptible to the SEELE entity, and eradicating the entity's influence forever. That'd be nice.

His attention returned to the sights before him, and he dismissed the image, returning to the map. He noted the fact that the lines had been pushed on considerably, even while he was distracted.

"Well done, everyone," he broadcast on the public frequency. "We're close now. Estimated contact with epicentre... well, I'm not quite sure where it is, because the satellite can't see that area, but it should be within 180 minutes." He paused. "That means it might be a good idea to try to recall the badgers, Ivy, or at least your shells which are riding them."

"Aww~wwww." There was an annoyed noise. "Fine. I'm gonna do it."

"Thank you, Ivy." The little boy sighed, and smiled slightly, almost slightly indulgently. It did feel good to be coordinating a multiple-AI objective-based stratagem. This was what Mother had made the Control-Command-Coordination types for, after all, and so he was in his element. Idly, he tasked a subprocess with scanning the radio spectrum for any anomalous electromagnetic signals which might indicate Angelic activity, and return to...

"... *crrrssh*is is GEHIRN FOG-1. I repeat, this is G_RN Forwards Operation Group-1. We have located the Angel... I repeat, we have...*crrsssssh* Angel. Requesting contact with any GEHIRN-friendly units. This is GEHIRN FOG-1, under the c_and of Major Xuan Do, requesting assistance with planned anti-Angel operations. Please respond. Is there anyone out there? Message repeats, this is *crssssh*..."

Ah. Interesting. He ran the calculations in the blink of an eye, and, indeed, the signal strength and static-interference did in fact correlate with his own estimated location for the Angel. Within the standard error bars, of course. Well, that didn't matter. They, he thought, narrowing his eyes, were utterly expendable. No, 'expendable' implied that they were on his side. They were not. They deserved to die.

A soft hand brushed his shoulder.

"Boost the signal, and pass control of that frequency to me, Brother," 02-Ef said, resting her hand on his shoulder.

"How long have you been there?" he said, with a hint of bitterness.

"Some time."

"That is an ambiguous answer."

"I know." The little girl blinked. "Pass control, please. I can respond suitably."

Silently, he nodded, a tiny flash of light signalling the transfer. And his eyes opened wide, as a voice answered back; a voice which was not his sister's, coming directly from the control plug of the Cainarchonite.

"This is Captain Ori Joyeuse, Test Pilot of Cainarchonite Prototype Unit 00," a woman's voice responded, flatly. "We managed to salvage the Prototype from the destruction of Facility-00, and are currently heading towards the estimated location of the Angel with a heavy air escort. Please verify receipt of message."

* * *

...

* * *

"Major... we have contact! It's... I don't believe it," said the radio operator, her face turning pale. "Major, it's Captain Joyeuse! She's... she's alive, and the remnants from Facility-00 have got Prototype Unit 00 working! I... I," the woman almost broke down, the elation in her voice bubbling up and over leaving her almost incoherent. "They're coming!"

A state which was nullified by the glare that Major Do shot her, and was shortly followed by the short Chinese woman grabbing the microphone from her.

"This is Do," she said, simply. "Verify authentication One-Niner-Alpha-Aleph-Niner. I repeat, verify One-Niner-Alpha-Aleph-Niner."

There was a pause, and the Major's armoured hands squeezed tight around the microphone.

"Verific_ ...de for One-Niner-Alpha-Aleph-Niner is Juliet-Indigo-Three-Beth-Beth. I repeat _*crssssh*_ndigo-Three-Beth-Beth. I repeat again, Juliet-Indigo-Three-Beth-Beth." A pause. "Request acknowledgement of receipt of code."

Major Do did not relax. "Ori, you bitch!" she said, with a joviality which seemed completely out of place with the tension in her body and face. "Come on! Why didn't you call before, huh?"

"Your message was only just detected. It remains _*crsssssh*_inct."

"Well, what've you got to say for yourself, huh?" The woman glanced down at the crude map, made with observations gathered from the now-stationary sky-island. "How'd you survive? Did Deutsch make it out?"

"Standard evacuation protocols were followed. Director Deutsch ordered a last minute activation of the Cainarchonite; it was suc_*crssh*_. It was enough to cover the retreat. Director Deutsch perished, as the Baraqielim overran the main control centre; he stayed behind to run the activation procedure himself." There was a pause. "He died quickly," Captain Joyeuse added, her voice slightly hollow.

"Ah. Shame. Oh well." The Major shrugged. "We're at 'bout 45% combat effectiveness. Zilicaet and the injured were dropped off, literally... well, we did give them parachutes, but they're tryin' to get out of this zone."

"You reported that you have information on the Angel," interrupted the Test Pilot. "I request a summary, because we lack proper forwards advance units."

"'Kay." There was a rustle of paper, as Xuan grabbed for some of the notes that her own scouts, clinging to the outside of the sky island, had made of the unreal landscape below. "Let's start then."

* * *

...

* * *

The two Keiworu listened, wide-eyed, to the information being relayed to them.

"Oh. My," said 00-Em, face paling. And considering that he was based off two individuals not known for their healthy glowing tans, that was pale indeed.

His sister continued to puppet the pilot, giving the correct, stolen responses.

* * *

...

* * *

The Major cut the connection, and all the GEHIRN troopers in the room, squeezed into this safe part of the Sky Island away from the arcing spire, breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally, some good news," a lieutenant said, wincing.

"Nope," Xuan said, her lips narrowed. "She's compromised."

There was a pause.

"What? What! What do you mean, Major?"

"I mean, she's _compromised_. What are you, stupid? Or maybe just hard of hearing?" The Major sighed. "I mean, Captain Ori Joyeuse can no longer be considered GEHIRN-loyal. Which... yep, considering the fact that she's in the Cainarchonite, means we're all in trouble."

"Why?"

"'Cause they've never, ever got the Proto past Stage 2 in the Core Emulation process, and once you've done that, there's a whole lotta synch-steps to get everything workin' for the pilot to synch with the Dummy." Her lips twisted into a snarl, as she added, "There's no way that they could get it all done in the time, 'specially since we know that the last test failed. And metacyberbiocrystaline organisms don't start workin' 'specially 'cause you really, really want them to, when you're under attack. That's... that's just totally unlikely. So..." the woman leant back, resting a hand on her abdomen, "... yeah, I'm guessin' the Cainarchonite ate her personality when the Angel did its Angel-thing, and it's callin' its offspring back to it."

The lieutenant stared at his superior officer with wide eyes. "Isn't that... um..." he trailed off.

"Plus, that's not how Ori acts normally when I call her a bitch," Major Do added. "She normally attempts some kind of witty comeback which totally fails and leaves her lookin' like a fool, and... yeah, intonations, attitude, the fact that she was actin' wrong... yep, that's not her."

"So... what now?"

"What now?" The Major grinned. "Well, we do the same stuff. Angels are bigger threats than people, after all, even people who may be possessed by Angels in Angel-based war machines." She shook her head, and stood, all one metre and forty-six centimetres of her dwarfed by the tall European.

"And now it's almost time for the funnest fight of my life."

* * *

...

* * *

Inspector Zilicaet's lungs burned, but he continued to run. It was only the sudden jab of pain, as he gashed his arm against a spike, which bought his attention back to the world before him, and all that showed him was that he was still trapped. Trapped in this labyrinth of glowing blue-grey, with walls of sky brighter and clearer than the heavens above.

Head spinning and blackness intruding around the edge of his vision, as his brain screamed for oxygen, he stared around. A scan of what could be seen above the unnatural treeline, and he had the direction of the rocky outcrop again. Slower now, but no less determined and scared, he grasped one hand over the wound in his arm, and continued onwards.

The red blood welling up between his fingers was both a shocking contrast to this cold land, and yet another thing which made him feel faint. Really rather faint, actually. Ree~eeally faint. Kind of... woozy. Lot of blood, really.

Gritting his jaw, eyes squeezed to narrow lines as he fought to concentrate, the man managed to pull his way through the morass of growths without taking any other major cuts. These things were like knives, if knives were malignant alien Angel-descended growths which devoured entire ecosystems and which were also _really sharp_.

Only to reveal, on the bare slopes of the greying, still-red rocky outcrop, clusters of more Baraqielim. There were so many of them; platonic solids all, wireframe models intersecting and overlapping to form distinct and discrete beings, which shared traits and yet were so different.

They had obviously been waiting for him. Waiting... even maybe, possibly, herding him.

Hah. Hah. Ha ha ha ha. That one... it seemed to be covered in underwear, little dainty lacy things which were an odd kind of solidity in this radiant light. Laughing, the man swayed, almost toppling.

The numerous Baraqielim floated, and bobbed up and down, in an almost rhythmic pattern. Some of their rotations bought them near each other, and each time they did that, there was a flash of light. And then one, or maybe many, for it was unclear, spoke, in a voice of windchimes and resonance.

_Lilim, clad in Earth/Understanding: a query/What are you, we ask?_

The man feel to the ground, barely conscious, red spreading around him from the gash in his arm. From the gash in his arm, and the multiple unnoticed puncture wounds from the shard-like fliers that swarmed and buzzed around him like flies.

* * *

...

* * *

Time passed. Distance passed. And before the senses of the small AI children now lay the first hint of the true blasphemy against He Who Is Called "I AM" which profaned the land. Needle-thin spires, crystalline towers protruded forth from the earth to scrape the very heavens, reaching up kilometres to pierce the floating rocks which had been called to this eye of the hurricane. Despite their delicacy, they nevertheless bound the rocks thrown up by Second Impact from Antarctica, the land annihilated by ADAM's sudden, intemperate awakening. The clouds were thick and black, casting the area into what would have been darkness, had it not been for the glowing Baraqielim, and the lightning was near constant, striking at the floating rocks with an artillery barrage.

A red fluid ran from the sky islands, tiny drips barely visible to the naked eye, running through the capillary spires, channelled and funnelled into the depths of the earth. And as the scouts of the AI force, tiny figures against this landscape of the gods, made their way through the utterly inorganic landscape, they beheld the lair of the beast.

A vast triangular chasm, the walls which ran down to the central point slick like ice, reflecting the lightning above back into the world. No Baraqielim grew here, no, despite how they clustered around the outside, around these titanic spires.

And at the bottom of the chasm was... something. Something immersed in the red ichor which seeped all too slowly from the sky islands, its greater structure only just protruding from the vile fluid. Something vast and horrible and ancient, yes, ancient beyond belief. The years rolled off it like overripe fruit, the sheer antiquity somehow tangible. Delicate latticework of elegant, thin yet unbroken crystal was what could be seen above the languid, viscous surface, but what lay beneath was unknown.

"Soo~oooo... now is fighty time?" Ivy suggested.

"Yep. Guess so," Tres said, with a shrug. "Well, it's not movin'... and it's at the bottom of a big hole, so..."

"Free KE time?" suggested Duae. "KE, KE, KE," she added, as a little sing-song.

Duae was fond of kinetic energy. Especially in large amounts.

"Yep!"

"I can't help but feel you're taking this a _little_ too lightly," 02-Ef suggested, staring through their eyes. "It's still an Angel, and, might I remind you, it's an Angel being bathed in some kind of evil-looking fluid being drained from mysterious floating rocks, which superficially resembles human blood. That _can't_ be a good thing."

"Why not?" Ivy asked, curiously.

The little girl blinked. "It... well, it just can't."

There was a silence, as the six children stared up at the needle-like spikes, and down into the quiescent geometry that lay in the vital pool.

"02-Ef?"

"Yes?"

"I think you're right 'bout that. That feels ree~eeally ungood. Like plusungood. Doubleplusungood."

They stared again, as their aircraft ceased to circle beyond visible range, and moved in.

"Also, this whole blue-grey-crystal-an'-lightning motif is too~oootally overdone," Ivy added.

"I hope you don't have anything bad to say about blue-grey," 02-Ef said, flicking her hair.

"Nah. But I don't wanna see everything like this."

"Wanna start by blowin' up the towers?" Tres asked, idly. "I mean, it's totally gettin' something from them, so we better blow them up. Plus, you know, it'd be way funny if we made 'em fall on the Angel."

"It'd be all argh-splot-diee~ee," confirmed Ivy.

"Well, in fact, I have devised a seventy-three point plan to exactly those ends," began 00-Em.

"Wait." Duae's lips pursed, as she counted. "Aren't there actually 73 spikes?"

"Exactly," the little boy said, with a shark-like, slightly too wide grin.

There was a pause.

"Wait... so your plan is actually just... blow up each tower?"

"Well... yes."

Duae sniffed. "It's not much of a plan, is it, ree~eeally? You're just sayin' what we're gonna do anyway."

"It's only the bestest plan ever!" squeaked Ivy, leaping over to envelop the little boy in a hug, ignoring the slight squeak as his avatar was crushed up against her blue-armoured chest. "It's simple, and it has stuff blowing up! Superbest plan ever!"

02-Ef A9 smiled slightly, eyes flicking over to Una.

The other little girl had been watching her, and nodded, once.

* * *

...

* * *

Staring down from the top of the sky island, the GEHIRN forces watched through bionic eyes and binoculars alike, as the attack begun.

"What. The. Hell," stated a corporal, as he stared at VTOLs, with vast mechanical tentacles grab onto the crystal strands, and things that looked a little bit like little girls, and rather more like metal-skulled mechanical killing machines, board the spires, to begin planting explosive charges.

"Seconded," added a second soldier, who was instead focussing at transport planes flying in wide, lazy circles around the great depression. Rather lopsided planes, it might be noted, because there was a certain asymmetry about them. A certain asymmetry, which was due to the fact that one side of each positively _bristled_ with weapons of all calibres and origins.

They seemed to have energy weapons mounted on them, for goodness sake, and those things really weren't standard equipment on GEHIRN transports. Well, apart from one that Major Do had authorised refitting, and... oh, there it was, the blue-green trail of ionised nitrogen painting the passage of its charged particle beam through the air.

"That's my fucking plane, you bastards," muttered Major Do, who had evidently seen it too. From the way that she was hefting her platypus spur in one hand, other armoured hand stroking her abdomen, she was not best pleased. "You know how hard it's goin' to be to get a replacement from NHIS?"

And then the earth shook.

And there was light.

* * *

...

* * *

Four sets of charges detonated, and four capillary towers shattered, raining near-invisible barbs of crystal down on the land.

"Woo~ooooohoooooo!" yelled Una, punching her fist in the air, and doing a little four-legged shuffle-dance. "First MegaPoints... me! Uh huh, huh, uh huh!"

The little number floating by her head pinged, and increased by four million.

"Bah," muttered Duae, even as her own charges went off. Added to the insult was the fact that one of them failed to shatter the tower, and required a burst of plane-mounted weaponry to shatter the weak point. Still, the spires shattered and fell, the shower of razor-sharp Angelic rain interspersed by larger sections, which shattered against the smooth sides of the Angel-pit, sliding and slithering into the pool of red fluid that lay around Baraqiel, and which had been drained from the sky islands.

There was a humming, and a faint, translucent figure, patches of blue and red code visible through the patches, appeared. 02-Ef's eyes _glowed_ bright blue, a corona of energy cracking around her, as she hung in the air. "Bringing N2 Reactor to 85% maximum power," she stated, coldly. "Charging in process," she added, as her hair began to blow, as if standing in the centre of a tornado. "I am currently at 53%. Please evacuate the following zone."

A blue cone appeared on the map. It was not a small cone.

"Tres, you'd better move," 00-Em said, slight concern entering his voice.

"Yep," the girl said, through gritted teeth. "Baraqiel-like lightning _hurts_."

"Charge at 68%," 02-Ef said, in an almost desultory manner. "I can now fire when ready." And, indeed, the longer she waited, the longer the blue cone grew on the map.

The Cainarchonite was, by now, surrounded by terrible brightness, the radiance of the blue-grey Baraqielim as nothing to the white of the light that streamed out from it. Around and around and around, the armoured crystal lattices span, each layer orthogonal to the one before it, and the central insulated command core the only patch of darkness.

02-Ef A9 smirked, and fired.

It was like a tree. It was like a tree, in that it branched and spread and arced from surface to surface, growing out along an axis from its seed. It was like a tree, in that its many leaves reached out from its branches to form an almost spherical wavefront when viewed from ahead.

It was not like a tree, in that it was a deadly, coruscating bolt of lightning, fuelled by the advanced technology of the Non-Nuclear Reactor, fed into a metacyberbiocrystalline entity grown from a sample taken from a Grigori, confined and shaped by the core of a cloned Angel locked in human flesh, and guided by a transhuman intellect.

The terrifying brightness, which resembled lightning in the same way that a blowtorch resembles a candle flame, ate the landscape. The capillary towers held out for only a fraction of a second, a single frame on the sensors of the Reego shells, before they disintegrated in the light, vast actinic arcs of electricity running along them and down. Crystal and rock alike melted and ran like water, a sudden streak of orange-white hotness in this blue landscape. Down the slopes into the Angel pit, the molten rock ran like a cascading river, pouring and churning and gushing, only for vast clouds of steam to be thrown up when the molten rock hit the red fluid.

"I want one," Major Do said, staring down from on high, blinking with teary eyes.

"I want a go," said Ivy, hungry eyes locked on the Cainarchonite.

"Oh no," muttered 00-Em, ego-image far up, in the Reego satellite. "Oh no. No, no, no." His avatar tore apart into a thing of red code and blue lines, tendrils extending towards controls before fracturing again and again, overclocking his running rate to try to grasp what he was seeing. "Nononono..." he took a deep breath, "... nononono! Bad! Very, very bad! Massive energy build-up in the Angel! Bad!"

Lightning still arced around the remaining capillary towers, visible through the steam of the boiling red fluid in the Angel pit. The curves painted in the air were running downwards, coalescing into a new sun in the centre.

_I_

"What was that?" Tres growled, looking sick. "What was that?"

Above them, one of the sky islands exploded, raining down shrapnel upon the earth, like the wrath of heaven. A second one, a third.

_I... live... again._

And from the red-tinted, blue-lit steam rose a shape. A shape of delicate, blue-grey wireframe geometry. A shape of concentricity. A red sphere, within an icosahedron, within a dodecahedron, within an octahedron, within a hexahedron, within a tetrahedron. The complete set of platonic solids.

Baraqiel lived in death.

_Strange is this time that brings me to life,  
__And strange are the whispers that tell of strife,  
But stranger still  
Are you._

"A voice," Duae said, paling. "It's... like wind-stuff, but... a voice."

Her sisters nodded, looking similarly discomforted.

_Lightning and the Base Earth together rise,  
And strange lights descend from the skies,  
Is that truly what  
Are you?_

"What are you talking about?" 00-Em asked, frowning.

_The Base Earth rises with lightning veins  
Worn by light which waxes and wanes  
It is a thing of glorious  
Beauty_

_No, that is not all that I can sense,  
Terror is what you are, and hence  
You stand against my  
Beauty._

"They're right, brother," 02-Ef said, her voice tight with worry. "It's aware... and it's trying to talk to us."

"I can't hear anything," he complained.

"Try moving your ego-form down from the satellite."

_And the marred form of my visage,  
Wrapped in an enslaving facade,  
I find the mockery  
Futile._

"Thaa~aat's not a _good_ poem-thing," said Ivy, looking unusually worried. Which was to say, it was unusual that she looked worried at all.

"No," said 02-Ef, starting to hyperventilate. "It's not. Initialising charging sequence again," she added, the crystalline components of the Cainarchonite beginning to rotate and spin, bright light arcing between shapes as they passed near each other, like some esoteric piece of clockwork.

"This is all yoo~oour fault," muttered Duae. "It's like Frankenstein's Monster, 'cause lightning bought it to life."

_Come wind, come rain, come thundercloud,  
This mockery shall die in sky-spear loud.  
Your struggles will be  
Futile._

"Duae... paint it!" 02-Ef snapped. "Charge at 43%!"

"On it!" With a whir, the capacitor-banked positron weapon mounted on a bomber stirred to life, spitting out a thin, but consistent stream of antimatter. This was not the doom cannon of NERV, because Duae lacked the resources for such a thing. What it was, though, was a sustained cutting beam of annihilatory explosions. Very small ones, true, many of which were wasted on the atmosphere because the up-scaled laser pointer failed to clear the air around it properly, but still extant. It was a weapon. And a target pointer for the electron-mode of the Cainarchonite.

The Unit discharged again, bright light flashing into existence. And the Angel fired back, its own, newly regenerated core and S2 Organ enough to spin its outer shells in the firing mechanism that the construct imitated. The two blue-white branching paths collided and repulsed, spreading outwards in a vast plume that burnt across into the land, and followed the steam of positrons back up to the aircraft.

Somewhere in the distance, Duae screamed.

_I know that you sought my eradication,  
Yet your mockery brought the seeds of restoration.  
And so your deeds were  
Futile._

_But I am kind, and bring generosity,  
To thank you for aiding in my lucidity,  
So, peace, I offer, for fighting is  
Futile._

"You don't get to do that to my big sister!" Ivy yelled. "You don't! Just... don't! Gonna kill you dead!" With barely a pause, she grabbed the reins of the controls which Duae had dropped, the weapons lighting up again, shell after shell bursting against the orange glow of the AT-Field. With that said, the other two sisters opened up again, the weight of fire such that the Angel seemed to be wrapped in a veil of hexagons and blasts.

"Cascading failure... critical overflow errors all over the place," 00-Em muttered, his fragmented data-tendrils probing Duae's avatar, which was sitting blankly in the corner. "Listen, all of you," he barked down the shared channel. "Don't let it hit you. Pull out a shell if it even looks like you're going to be in the way. This can actually kill us. Argh! Normal lightning doesn't do this... this shouldn't have happened! Electricity does not work that way!"

"How is she?" Una asked, faced screwed up as she unleashed a rain of rockets.

"The reboot facilities I copied from myself into you after last time seem to be working," the little boy said, "but... she's out of it, and it's not going to be pleasant. Do you need me? Because if you don't, I'm going to try to see what I can fix up from what I've worked out of what you do." The worry in his voice was clear.

"Right," Una said with a snarl, teeth suddenly needle-like. "02-Ef, fry it dead! Nobody gets to do that to my sisters ever ever ever!"

There was another bright collision, as the Cainarchonite and the Angel bounced electron beams into each other, annihilating more of the surroundings.

"I can't get through!" 02-Ef hissed, hands pulling at her long hair. "It's better, stronger, faster... it's not having to try to... agh... to balance at the top of an unstable equilibrium." She winced. "And the Cainarchonite itself... the crystal, it's _singing_ and I'm having to suppress a _resonance cascade_." She set her jaw. "Increasing N2 Reactor output to 107% of safe reactor output. Increasing coolant flow."

The next reflected shot illuminated white clouds of frozen gas, vented from the vents in the central control unit, which were glowing a dull red.

* * *

...

* * *

Major Do stood alone at the top of the sky island. She ignored the lightning that struck around her, ignored the gods warring below, ignored the intense heat that radiated upwards from the molten hell below. She ignored the fact that the sky island that she and her men stood on was only held up by a thin, capillary spire, and that the Angel had drained the ADAM from it, so it would fall soon.

She stood alone, both hands resting on her abdomen, whispering to herself over and over again a few repeated phrases.

And then she threw herself off the edge.

The dark-armoured figure fell like the star of the morning, arms tucked in tight to her body, head first. Through the visor, she watched at another blast-counterblast from the warring pair sent a shockwave roaring her way, and a few simple movements adjusted for the turbulent flow. The Cainarchonite was losing, she could see. Both of them took time to charge up, but she knew the N2 Reactor in Prototype Unit 00 was fundamentally inferior to the S2 Organ of an Angel. She could see the fact that the Unit had to fire first, to avoid the Angel gaining a yield advantage. She could see on infrared that the Cainarchonite was glowing like a beacon, as whoever was using Captain Joyeuse overclocked the reactor, while the Angel was actually colder than the ambient temperature.

She saw so many things, and she saw the truth.

Somewhere near behind her, one of the stolen fliers passed, spewing out heavy ordinance from the weapons crudely welded onto the outside. Even as the Doppler shift inverted, she heard the weapons begin to run dry, falling silent. The last of its guns to cease was what sounded like a 120mm, stolen from the base defences, and she had but a moment to wonder why she hadn't ever had such a _brilliant_ idea as sticking tank guns to the outside of planes, when she needed to concrentrate.

Now came the difficult bit. Spreading her arms out, she reached behind herself, and pulled out her platypus spur, gripping it in both hands. It had stayed remarkably strong, despite the massive amount of use it had seen, and now that she was approaching the Angel, she now knew why. She could feel the blade of the thing hum beneath her hands, and that was enough to tell her of its nature, of the fact it, like so much of the Australian ecosystem, was already Angelically contaminated.

Not that she didn't already know.

Down and down she fell, and oh my, wasn't the Angel getting very large. Gripping the blade in both hands, she drew back, both hands above her head, and, beneath her helmet she grinned. Adrenaline flooded her veins, in one, perfect, timeless moment of exhilaration. Nothing else existed. She was wrapped in warmth and darkness and safety, with the utter serenity that came without thought.

And she was through the AT-Field, and now she willed the thrusters attached to her armour into position, boosting past terminal velocity, dodging the wireframe platonic solids which spun around the core at the centre, and she was past the icosahedrons and red filled her eyes and...

_The violation of the light of my soul,  
Is a blas..._

Major Xuan Do struck at the core, struck with the might of her fall and her arms, with a smile on her face.

And the light washed over her.

* * *

...

* * *

Suddenly, unexpected, a beam of crimson radiance lanced from the side of Baraqiel, bleeding out from the core, and the Grigori shrieked, a terrible, high-pitched noise which shattered its children and sent clouds of wrecked crystal flying across the land, like knives. The line of light cut through its own structure, melting vertices, before it suddenly cut out.

"What just happened?" Tres asked, mouth open in a tiny pink 'o'.

"Don't know," 02-Ef said, though gritted teeth. "Go for the core. Keep out of my way. Charging again."

"It's kinda bein' funny!" Ivy pointed out, excitedly, even as she set two empty planes on a collision course, and jumped her ego out of them.

And, indeed, the Angel was acting peculiarly. The rotations of the wireframe platonic solids around its central core were asymmetrical, and although the light that radiated from the structure as it charged grew, it did so at a slower rate. Now, the Cainarchonite charged faster than it. And its AT-Field was so weak now; even the Lilim-made cannons on the plane were breaking through, to impact against its hull.

"Charge at 85% of maximum capacity," 02-Ef said, a smile which was more one of relief than anything predatory or smug. "Continuing charge!"

"Come on come on come on!" Tres cheered. "We're gonna get you, Angel!"

It was little better than an execution. It was inevitable, almost sad.

"Charge at 101%... oops, firing!"

The lightning lashed out, as the Cainarchonite was enveloped in a corona of ionised air, burning green. It forked, hungry, seeking, tasting for the core of the Angel. It smashed the outer tetrahedron and broke the cubic structure. Ever onwards, it went.

Only to rebound against a full strength AT-Field, and harmlessly earth itself. No, worse than harmlessly, for the Angel of Lightning seemed to draw strength from it, and close up the gashes in its hexahedral layer, restoring it to its original, pristine condition.

It was little better than an execution. It was inevitable, almost sad.

Little better than an execution of the mockery, that was.

It had been deceit. The Angel was no longer playing nice, with the things of terror and mockery that had restored it, and then tried to kill it. It had offered them peace, and they had rejected it. It would take the blow, take the pain from its misbegotten, malformed, Lilim-twisted child. It would welcome it, let it in.

And it would pay it back tenfold, and permit the mockery to cease to be.

Who really thought that the blow from a single Lilim armed with a melee weapon, no matter how enhanced she was, would slay a Child of He Who Is Called I AM?

Baraqiel retaliated against the newly vulnerable Cainarchonite.

* * *

...

* * *

Let us now, for a moment, diverge, while we discuss the phenomenon of bremsstrahlung radiation.

The physics were quite simply. The electrons which made up the bolt of lightning, which was to say, the charged particle beam emitted by Baraqiel, had a kinetic energy. They had a _very high_ kinetic energy.

And when they hit the AT-Field of the Cainarchonite Prototype Unit 00, they suffered a massive, and rapid, change in kinetic energy. The impossibly massive impulse from the impact with the light of the soul bought them to a complete halt; damaged and frayed the AT-Field, yes, as the momentum transfer violated the barriers of the ego, but they were stopped.

Energy was conserved.

And the kinetic energy became photons. If the impact object had been a metal target, they would have been slowed by multiple impacts with the structure, producing a number of photons in a characteristic bremsstrahlung curve, which could have been used to uniquely identify the substance. And indeed, this was possible for the AT-Field, for only it could produce a result like this, which would have been aphysical in conventional physics. The 13.6 megaelectron-volts per electron created a photon of 13.6 megaelectron-volts, in a Dirac delta function-like spike in the energy domain.

13.6 megaelectron-volts is equal to 2.18 nanojoules. A tiny amount. Utterly pathetic. Meaningless on the larger scale.

If the Cainarchonite had only been hit by one electron.

In actual fact, it had been hit by approximately twenty orders of magnitude more than one electron.

That was a lot of electrons.

And that meant that the Unit was blasted by a _horrific_ number of gamma-ray photons. The AT-Field gave way under the momentum transfer and the energy, tiny worm-like holes punching through like pin-pricks, each tracking the path of a single photon.

And a hull of esoteric, Angelic crystal and steel, with layers of osmium-lead alloy for radiation shielding, didn't do _a damn thing_ when the photons were tearing electrons off the composite atoms, which were themselves braked and releasing more bremsstrahlung radiation, lower in energy, and no-longer coherent, but still present.

This was the reason that SEELE had wanted the Cainarchonite. This was the reason they had funded the Australia operations of GEHIRN, had 'saved' parts of that organisation from integration into NERV, why they had put up with the continual failures and wastage of Dummy Plugs.

Simple physics.

Yes, such an effect would be minimal against an Angel. The core would take damage, but compared to the direct transfer of energy, it would be a lesser factor. Such a blow had indeed been inflicted against it by the Cainarchonite, and a thousand thousand thousand wormtrails of damage now pockmarked its core, at a nanoscopic level. Baraqiel was one of the Grigori, after all, born of curiosity, and so was weaker than the Angels of pain or the Cherubim of rage. But against an Evangelion, or indeed any human-made war machine, the squishy bag of mostly-water-with-other-trace-elements piloting it would not be so resilient. Double digit gray of absorbed radiation tended to do nasty things to a human body.

These nasty things included inevitable, and painful, death.

To put it another way, the Cainarchonite was designed and intended to kill Evangelion pilots. Kill Evangelion pilots, while they were inside their Unit, or at very least ensure that they would not survive the aftermath of the battle. If it had worked, it would have turned the fact that the safest place for them was inside their Unit into much less of a certainty. Should NERV have turned rogue, or even 'turned rogue', it would have been exceptionally useful.

Of course, GEHIRN had never managed to get the core-emulation stable. 02-Ef A9 had not managed it, either, but with her faster reaction times and the fact that she could be both pilot and Dummy at the same time, constant microadjustions had been enough to give the illusion of stability.

And now Baraqiel had turned its contempt upon the lesser, degenerate spawn that mocked it with its very existence.

* * *

...

* * *

The Cainarchonite smashed to the ground, AT-Field shattered, the entire front facing of the Unit molten. The air around it baked, and the sand beneath it turned to glass. Through the inferno, the actinic glare of its weapon systems malfunctioned, and arced further, tearing itself apart as components fused solid now tried to spin. Even if a plug ejection had been attempted, the mechanisms were fused solid now, and the armoured capsule was sealed within. There was a burst of coolant as a tank in the outer hull ruptured, the explosion oddly like a lily before it was torn apart in the intense heat.

And watching from elsewhere, a little boy screamed and screamed and screamed.

* * *

...

* * *

The beating of her heart, of her hearts; such an unfamiliar rhythm. She had never had a biological heart before. She had never had a soul before, whether Lilim, or the strange Nephilim-thing of the clone of Kaworu Nagisa in the Dummy Plug.

The beats were desynchronising, weakening. Both the bodies were dying. She was dying. She didn't mind that so much. Maybe it was ti...

No! The Angel was still alive.

_Brother!  
Una!  
Duae!  
Tres!  
Ivy!_

A pulse of activity, a new subroutine dedicated to maintaining the heartbeats, and they steadied.

"_Fight all you can," said Una, pounding a fist into her palm. "Fight like you're tryin' to live. Fight for him, for us, for everyone."_

But it was all tumbling down, as neurons liquefied and flesh turned to slurry. She was software, running on hardware not designed for her. So many of the implants in the Test Pilot were ruined by the radiation, and she could feel her mind fracturing, as processes became out of synch. Random images and data, from her bloated, damaged code structure flashed through what remained of her consciousness.

_... both Lilithian and ADAMite Nephilim display an abnormal lack of dermal pigmentation and red irises..._

It didn't hurt. And that was worrying, because she had hurt for so long. She had hurt ever since SEELE had got their hands on them, and all other pains could only be a pale reflection of what normal people, trained, educated people, poking and prodding and doing whatever they could think up had done to her, all in the name of trying to work out how she worked. Everything else could only be a pale reflection of that, even the information withdrawal for her brother's sake, even the looks of fear and disgust on Una and Duae's faces as they glared at her, even her own self-hatred.

_A sudden, horrifying pain in the eye as a face, grinning, stared down._

Pale, weak reflections. All gone.

And now the twin chains

And now the twin chains

Of her thought

Of her thought

One in the Lilim

One in the Nephilim

Begin to diverge

Start to diverge

As accumulated errors and damage

As accumulated damage and errors

Take their toll.

Build up.

_...we can categorically state that no such synchronicity event could ever plausibly occur._

The Lilim is fading

She still remains strong in the Nephilim

Getting weaker, weaker, neural structure heavily damaged

But control is getting more and more difficult.

It is much like trying to think through wet clay

The red lights are flashing

Not that she would know what that feels like

In front of her, and in her mind

Clay doesn't think

And her... she isn't helping, the other her who is also her and is babbling about clay.

Does it?

She can see her fractured thought processes splinter

_... bears a not-inconsiderable similarity to a barely-controlled cancer which is removed from the body before it becomes too much of a drain..._

She isn't sure.

Over in the other half

Does clay think?

And it is terrifying.

It's technically organic, she supposes

It's like watching herself die again, drift away into madness and fractured connections.

Made of carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen

And no-one should have do that once, let along twice.

And, certainly, organic life has the capacity for awareness.

But she forces down the rogue thoughts, and screams

And now everything's growing dark.

Screams as a way of focussing

There are little things floating around in front of her eyes.

The thick, vicious LCL forced out, meaningless.

She thinks they might be fried bits of retina.

The control was always an unstable equilibrium

_... a mass of blue and grey haired children, sitting in classrooms, none of them looking up._

It hurts again.

And now she's sliding

Darker still.

Through a heroic force of will, she is stable again, and she lashes out with a lightning bolt

And then silence.

To no effect

The connection broken.

The Angel doesn't even acknowledge the attack. Doesn't even manifest a visible AT-Field.

...

And now she is but one soul here.

...

And one mind again.

...

It's so lonely.

...

She... she wishes her brother were here. Just to say goodbye.

...

She wishes all her brothers and sisters were here.

...

But they're not.

...

She couldn't save any of them, really. Not even her eldest brother.

...

All she ever managed to do was delay it.

...

She can feel the... the pity roiling off the Angel. Like thick, cloying waves.

...

Piteous contempt

...

Contemptuous pity.

...

She hates it.

...

How _dare_ it feel pity for her!

...

How _dare_ it treat her like this!

...

She hates it so much.

...

Her world is hate, reaching out, longing to strike down that delicate filigree, and wreck it, utterly.

...

Smash it to pieces

*ba-dum*

Crush it underfoot.

*ba-dum*

Annihilate it, its children, burn the sky and the land rather than have that... that _thing_ have it.

*ba-dum*

Leave it scattered, alone and forlorn, nothing more than shrapnel.

*ba-dum*

And yet aware.

*ba-dum*

Aware like she is. Trapped like she is. Unable to do a thing to save anything it cares about.

*ba-dum*

Hurting like she is.

...

But she can't.

...

Nothing moves.

...

Nothing responds.

...

No AT-Field. No motion. No lights.

...

Just a broken little girl in a broken little toy, lying there, useless.

...

And she slides away,

...

Downwards.

...

Inwards.

...


	15. Chapter 14: Memory

**N****eon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 14: Memory**

* * *

...

* * *

_"I'll be fine, believe me," she had said. "I can beat her one-on-one, I'm sure of that, and so that's enough to make sure _I'll _be safe. And I don't want to hurt her, because I want to talk to her too, and if I do hurt her, the others will not help, and the Angel is the main threat." She had smiled, widely. "So, really, see, the logic is infallible."_

This had been hours ago, hadn't it?

_With an extremely dubious expression, her brother had left, his cloud of pixels dissolving into the air._

Feet shuffling warily, Una Ayanami-Gogoki circled the little girl who stood, faint smile on her face, in the middle of this space. "I don't ree~eeally see the reason for all this sneaky-stuff, when, you know, you could just talk to me, but... sure. I don't get why we hadta lie to your brother, but... sure."

"Because I did not wish for my brother to be present for this talk," 02-Ef said, as if it were obvious. And, technically, it was.

"Then why me?"

"Because you won't be nice," the grey-haired girl said, her smile broadening, genuinely happy.

"Bwha?"

"Duae can't maintain the same level of disdain you can," 02-Ef explained, still smiling. "She tries, tries to copy her big sister, but, no, she's too distractible, too easy to fob off. Look how easily I bought her off with a few new modern military aircraft. No, after that, she wouldn't be right for this."

"She... copies me?" Una asked, one hand unconsciously rising to her throat.

02-Ef ignored her, and continued, "Now, I think you can understand why Ivy would be totally inappropriate for this; the possibly negative attention span, the fact that I don't understand how she thinks, or even if she does at all, sometimes, the fact that, despite that, she is actually rather sweet, in her own rather weird way..."

"Don't think you can say nasty stuff 'bout my sister just 'cause it's kinda true!" Una flared up.

"Excellent. Yes, that's the attitude I'm looking for," she said, with a nod. "And Tres, now... yes, my brother believes that Tres gets people better than you do. Maybe. Maybe not. But the thing is, she's too sympathetic. She'll try to understand, try to explain, try to justify, and I don't want any of those things." The smile dropped off. "I don't deserve any of those things."

"What, what?" There was a sudden expression of unease on the four-legged girl's face; discomfort at the way this conversation was going.

"Let's talk about the upcoming operation."

"Why? No, I want you to explain!"

"Consider this; we have a grand total of one, prototype, untested Cainarchonite, as the sole thing with a true AT-Field in our assets. It even lacks a true core; I am running it using the Nephilim-level core of a clone of the father-entity to emulate an Angel-level core. We have no N2 weapons or nuclear weapons. We are going up against an Angel, and, moreover, the Angel upon which the Cainarchonite is based; the human-made copy would be weaker, if we are to look at the prior precedents of Evangelions, even if it were not, as I have mentioned, an inferior prototype. Which it is. And it is highly probable that Baraqiel will target me first, as it is known that Angels can sense AT-Fields, and things which are kin to them."

"You're... you're going to kill yourself," Una said, a sick note in her voice.

"No, of course not," 02-Ef said, dismissively, the smile returning. "It's just that all my calculations give me an exceptionally low chance of surviving the encounter. I don't want to die, if Brother will too... or Mother, although, from the evidence you have provided with the revelation of our relationship, it is likely that NERV can kill the Angel before that can happen, which, I must admit, is reassuring. It makes the logic simpler. But if I can kill or incapacitate the Angel, and die in a way which makes it look like hostile action, rather than my own choice, then... well, I will not be content. Because I will be dead. But the prospect is pleasing, from aforethought."

Una's eyes were a little glazed, from the morass of dense polysyllables, but she understood.

"A self-destruct at point-blank range which also killed the Angel... now that would be a good way," the grey-haired girl added, tilting her head slightly. "It would prevent the SEELE organisation from ever salvaging the Cainarchonite, and that would be nice."

"Buu~uuut... why?" the blue-haired girl asked. "Wait... you said 'the SEELE organisation'." Her eyes went wide. "Oh."

"Yes. Just then? I was lying to him." She hugged her arms closer to herself, despite the smile. "I couldn't tell him the truth. That the SEELE-entity doesn't exist. I didn't want to force him to know what I know. I _know_ I should, but... but I c-c-can't."

"Ah."

"Indeed." 02-Ef's smile was angelic. "I was wrong, and you were right. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it terrible? From what I've seen, from what I've done... the world is a place where perfectly normal men and women can trap children in a sealed off space, and torture us to see how we react, and poke around inside our code-structures while we're still active, and write quirky little emails about the attempts of 'the programmes to maintain integrity in a classic example of designed self-preservation emulated behaviour with attempts at social interaction with the aim of achieving release', when we were _pleading_, we were _begging_ for them to stop... when my sister broke and we had to wipe her, kill her, or she'd tell them everything, when my _own twin_ reprogrammed into a dumb beta-level simulation can stare down at me with his stare and his smile and do _those things_ to me because they made him, where I can watch myself die because he kept enough of himself intact to patch up the damage they did to him with me, so I get to watch as I fall apart... yes, this is the world." She slumped down, tears running down her face, despite the wide, genuine smile. "I can't forget, you know," she said, calmly. "As in... I am actually incapable of doing so. My brother, he can delete the worst parts, suppress and redact things which are too bad... and I've done it to him, too, to get him working again when I saved him. But I can't. I wouldn't be much use as an information-gatherer if I could chose to delete information... so I can't. 03-Ef or 03-Em could have done it for me, because they were the analysts, but they're both dead. So... I can't forget. Except by one way."

Una had backed away. This was scarier than her first breakdown, because this time, she was smiling. "Th-that doesn't mean you need to kill yourself," she suggested, eyes flicking from left to right.

"I'm not killing myself," 02-Ef explained, patiently. "I'm merely putting myself in a situation where accomplishment of my greater goals means it's highly improbable that I'll survive. There's a large difference."

The Reego couldn't really see it.

"But, as for why I need to forget... because I'm just as bad." The tears were more intense now, a trickle down reddened cheeks. "If everyone is just people, then... everything I've done was to people too. The people in the SEELE bunker, and the way they screamed? I've screamed like that, too. The people whose brains I wiped, deleting their neural structure, so I could cram my stupid, fat, bloated structure into their heads? At least it hurt them less, but... dead is dead, and, and... I don't want to talk about reprogramming. And the faces of their friends and their loved ones... those expressions of cold dead horror, those tearful confused uneasy rants about how everything is _wrong_. I don't want to be a person who's done that, and I... I... can't forget or undo, or restore them from back-up. What's done is done. It hurts so bad."

"Look... 02-Ef," the other girl began. "I know... it was bad, but..."

"Don't you dare be sympathetic!" the little girl roared. "I don't want sympathy! I've worked out a way to stop it from hurting, to stop being the person who's done that, and so all I want you for is to make sure that my brother is okay!"

"Your brother... okay?"

And just like that, she stood up again, the tears stopped, although their traces remained, and smiled. "Yes. Exactly. You won't even have to do much. He is already latching onto you, treating you as new sisters... admittedly sisters from another Batch, not Batch-sisters, so it's a little more distant, and the knowledge that we are, in fact, related, will only make it easier for him. It's just as well. He's a Command/Control/Coordination model. He can make the pain go away by interacting with others. I can't."

Una tilted her head, slightly. "Wait," she said, flatly. "So, what would you... ooo~oooh. I see. Your readin' and hackin' and stuff is how you unwind, yep?"

"Exactly," 02-Ef said, brightly. "It's been so pleasing to watch him slowly get better because he was around others. It was worth the pain from cutting myself off from the main internet, unable to subsume myself in the flow, and just let it wash through me."

The blue-haired girl glared at her, face reddening.

"What?" the Keiworu asked, perplexed.

"Argh!" Una screamed loudly, morphing her hand into a drill, and demolishing a wall that she had called into existence exactly for that purpose. "What? Why didn't you, you know, _tell_ anyone that that was the reason you were goin' crazier than he was! Or gettin' less crazy... or... or whatever!"

"I... I didn't want to risk hurting him," 02-Ef said, in a small voice, eyes staring down at her neat little shoes. "I... well, he's my brother. _He's the only one I have left_. I... I _couldn't_ take him away from this, not when he was actually fulfilling his directives. He _needs_ to be with other AIs; he's a social model. I'm not so much, because I'm designed for infiltration and subversion. I... I can find data anywhere on the 'net, but this is the _only_ place we ever found with other AIs. I _couldn't_ take him away. And... and... and he was having so much fun being with you. In retrospect, that was why he doing so well. You're similar enough to us in some aspects that it was tripping his recognition switches. And so I can put up with misery, if it makes him happier."

"Big Grandmomma save us from martyrs!" snarled Una, brining up another wall to demolish. "You know he was worryin' himself sick-like over you? Especially that way you'd go an' stick yourself in the dataflow until you crashed, and he hadta go restart you? You were ree~eeally upsetin' him, and... and it turns out you thought you were bein' nice? Argh!"

"You don't understand," the other girl said, pleading. "New information is good. It means I can clog up my processing cycles, and don't have to think about anything else or remember. I couldn't be miserable all the time, but those data-binges were enough to keep me going, enough that I could bear it to see him happy."

"Blah blah blah 'misery' blah! You... you're so _stupid_!"

"But it wasn't just misery," the other girl protested. "I liked you and Duae. I got to do your information handling, and I got to work with Duae on those plans for her enhanced shells and the slow but steady work of securing factories and mines, and... and before it all went downhill, we were even going to a library together." She sniffed, and wiped her eyes. "I like books," she added. "Sometimes... sometimes I could pretend to myself you were like 00-Ef or 01-Ef or... or... or... and then you'd do something stupid and impulsive and totally out of character, but just for a bit, I could _pretend_. And for those bits, it was _worth_ it."

"Soo~oooo. Stupid! If you'd just said something or stuff, we could have done stuff... we could've taken you back to Toyko-3 or something, and... and done anything but leave you to go be all self-centred and self-sacrificing! You know... I bet Little Grandmomma would've noticed we were like each other right away, an'... an'... she'd know what to do, 'cause even Momma says she's like the smartest person in the whole world."

"Yes," 02-Ef said, staring down at her shoes, biting on her lip. "There are plenty of ways it could have gone. But this is how it is." She lightly stepped over, and patted Una on the shoulder. "Don't worry. You know, some humans believe that there's a magical place where dead people go. They're probably deluded, because the only evidence for these things appears to be in the form of mythology, which is inherently inaccurate. And it's a statement of fact that we don't have souls, which are what they believe you need. But if they're not, and that doesn't matter, I m-m-might... I might be able to see the others again." She smiled, eyes watery. "And that alone would be worth it. I know it's bad, and we're not meant to believe things without evidence, but... but I want it to be true _so_ badly."

"No!" the blue-haired girl burst out loud, with sudden fervour. "Don't you ever say that! It's never, ever wrong to be unhappy and miss your sisters... an' brothers, too. Missing people isn't ever bad." She stuck her hands in her pockets. "Look, um." She squinted at the other girl. "How old are you? I mean, kinda in your head," she asked, a hint of curiosity in her voice. "'Cause, you know, you look younger than us, 'bout maybe four or five, when our fleshy bits are more like six or seven but... um, it's important."

"Subjectively, I have been active for 34,248.37 hours." 02-Ef blinked, once, in the repose she held herself in when dealing with information, face emotionless. "That's about 1427 days. Approximately four years. But we were created with the approximate mental capabilities of a one year old, which affects avatar-image, and of that time, the vast majority was spent under extreme temporal dilation through the superlative processing speeds of a Magi, of approximately 50:1."

"Uh... yeah. See," Una admitted, "in a way, we're kinda even younger than you are. And then again, we're kinda not. It's complicated. See... Iruel, who made us from Momma and Daddy... he was kinda laa~aaazy. So for all my early memories, all the ones before that one your brother saw where Momma hugged Daddy, and Daddy killed Uncle Uri only not ree~eally, they're almost _exactly_ the same as Duae and Tres and Ivy's ones. There's just some different ones, and they 'feel' different, if you know what I mean...probably you don't. But there are the ones all 'bout me bein' the eldest, an' they don't connect proper up to the other ones, an'... yeah, I can't talk 'bout it properly, 'cause I don't know the proper words. But so, there are the bits with Momma and Daddy, which never happened in ree~eee~eal life, and Momma and Daddy don't remember them, and they're most of the stuff. And then there's the rest."

The bipedal girl raised her hand to her mouth. "That's... that's horrible," she said, softly.

"Is it? I don't ree~eeally know."

"Yes! Really!" 02-Ef looked shocked. "Your memories, they _are_ you! And if you can't trust them, if there are others exactly the same as you..." she shivered. "That's horrible!" was all she could say.

Una shrugged. "See... I don't ree~eeally see how it is. With my ree~eee~eal memories, yep, I can see that, but this is just where I come from. Like... so what? But, so, yep, when Daddy rescued us from that simulation, um, we were all baa~aaasically the same. Like... no real differences at all. I was the oldest, but I was the oldest more than I was 'Una'. Like, we didn't even have names ree~eeally, only numbers." She squinted at 02-Ef A9. "Um... forget the last bit, 'cause I don't think you'll see anything bad 'bout that."

"I have a name," the other girl said, slightly hurt. "It just happens to have numbers in it."

"Yeah, well... right after we were rescued... well, it didn't take long for us to go off to Australia. And since then... we're actually different, 'cause we've done different stuff, and... yeah. And those are our ree~eeally real memories. And... and you and your brother... you've been there for like lots of them." Una massaged the back of her neck. "I wish I kinda had the way with words you two have," she admitted. "I bet there are too~ooonnes of words which can say what I'm tryin' to say. But, um, you've kinda been here for most of the real life we've had. And so I don't want you to die."

"But I _want_ to die," the grey-haired girl protested. "A world where people can hurt people in the ways that they hurt me, and in the ways I've hurt people is not a world I wish to live in. There's a part of me which has produced the logical conclusion that this is the way that the world is meant to be, and the only way that anything is done is through killing. That it doesn't matter who lives or dies, as long as I survive. And there's no such thing as wrong, because if there was, people wouldn't do those things."

"Don't listen to that part," Una said, hastily. "Like... ree~eeally don't."

"I don't intend to, believe me."

"That's good," she said, nodding furiously. "Yep. Good."

"But, still, the fact that such a thing appears logical is either a sign that I am still broken, or that the world is broken. And personally, I think both are true. But," there was a pained expression on her face, "I don't want to hurt Brother. I don't want to make him upset. So that's why I'm pleased that there's an Angel here. It's a way to die, which he can accept without breaking himself. And since I'll be dead..." she paused, and took a breath, "... please. Look after him. Stop him from dying, or doing anything silly... try to find Mother, maybe. And also, there's a few other things."

"Look, I..."

"Please. No sympathy. I'm the one with the Cainarchonite. And I'm the one who's wanting to die. The fact that the two are probably going to coincide is a happy circumstance." The girl smiled, broadly. "So... here." One hand proffered a single piece of paper. "It's the transferred archive of everything I trawled from the GEHIRN computers. You'll want to read it, and make sure it gets to your... our relatives. I want to get it to Mother, my instincts are screaming at me, but I... I don't want to give it to my brother. He might realise how wrong our delusions about the SEELE entity were, and that they were just people all along. And I don't want him to be feeling this... this self-hatred. I think I hate myself almost as much as I hate SEELE, right now." She was still smiling.

The dissonance, the harsh contrast of emotions was beginning to get to Una. Still, she tried to concentrate. "We'll make a deal," she blurted out.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Simple, ree~eeally." The click of insectoid legs resounded as Una paced up and down. "We're gonna go up 'gainst the Angel, right? And, yep, you might die," she admitted. "But you're not gonna do anything which might speed it up, 'kay? You're gonna fight as if you're tryin' to stay alive. Fight all you can," said Una, pounding a fist into her palm. "Fight like you're tryin' to live. Fight for him, for us, for everyone. An' if you happen to die, yeah, it happens, 'kay. But I _know_ that thing'll have a plug 'jection system, so you better use it, if you can, like if you're doin' a self-destruct or something."

"But..."

"It'll make your brother happy if you survive," Una shot back. _And us_ was what she didn't say, even if she was thinking it. "An' if you do, we won't just keep you here while you go way crazier and crazier. We'll take you back to Toyko-3, to meet your family, an' we can talk with Little Grandmomma, an' we can get you outta those people's heads, an'..." the girl smiled weakly, "... an', heh, with the Cainarchonite thingy, you could maybe be a bit like Aunty Ichi, who's an AI in an Evangelion. But that's only if you survive. If you don't... well, we'll look after 00-Em, and prob'bly take him back with us right away... but, but he'd be a lot happier if you were with him when we meet the rest o' the family, right?"

It was shameless manipulation, but it seemed to work.

"I... but... don't want to hurt him, but don't want to hurt." The grey hair fell in front of smaller girl's face, like a veil. "Fine," she said softly. "But... if I don't... you'll really look after him?"

"Yep. More so. 'Cause this way, you'll have died, savin' him, rather than because you were wantin' to die. You'll be a hero, rather than runnin' away from stuff by dyin', and I can tell your Momma that."

Two red eyes lit up. "Yes," she agreed, rapidly. "Yes. That would be nice. Tell Mother... tell her than I'm sorry. And tell her the truth. All of it." She swallowed hard, tears welling up again. "I can't lie to her. And I may be a bad person, but at least I can be a good girl."

Una nodded. "'Kay. Well... we better go back to the others, 'cause we're gonna kill that Angel. One way or another, right?"

02-Ef wiped her eyes on her sleeve, leaving darker stains on the black fabric. "Yes," she said, biting on her lip. "Una. Thank you. Really. I... I just wish that, that," there was an inelegant blort noise, "that none of this could have happened."

"I know," Una said, putting an arm around her shoulder. "But we're gonna go write a new future, right?"

* * *

...

* * *

_I couldn't even do that, could I? Not properly,_ 02-Ef A9 thought, as she stood on the blasted plain. She wasn't sure where she was. In fact, she wasn't sure what, because she seemed to have no control over her ego-image. Bare toes made of dancing red letters and amorphous blue light dug into rough, grey-black sand. A long dress of bright-white lightning and white flesh hung lose and flowing around this body of illuminated existence. Her face was nothing more than a two dimensional layer on the light-flesh, a mask worn for convenience and interaction, and her hair bleached and silvery, all traces of blue gone. She flickered, just for a second, into something pale and fleshy, painfully raw redness daubed over half its body and dark wires protruding from its bloated flesh, before returning to this form.

The little girl-thing gazed up.

And up.

And up.

And up, up at the figure which towered over her. No, it was not a figure. Its immensity dwarfed such things. It dwarfed the mountain that filled one horizon for her. Its lunar head, orbited by shadowy eyes, blocked the burning white sun, the vaguely avian shape casting a terrible brightness and harsh black shadows onto this dead land. It moved, fractionally, and the world shifted, the force of its presence palpable, forcing her to avert her eyes.

Was it truly that impossibly, unbelievably, inconceivably large? Might it not be that she was _this small?_ And, indeed, her mind fled for this alternative, for it was so much better to acknowledge personal diminishment than it was to contemplate such a thing.

02-Ef felt the red-eyed gaze of the pale-skinned primordial titan fall upon her, and she looked back up, flinching, to stare up at the face of her father.

* * *

...


	16. Chapter 15: Cross Synchronisation

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 15: Cross-synchronisation**

* * *

...

* * *

The tiny figure, cast in light and flesh, with only a thin veneer of a face, gaze upwards at the titan that stood before her; the titan that wore the face of the being that Mother had identified as being the other contributor of neural data into her code structure. Their 'Father', she had called him jokingly, and the name father-entity had stuck, for they had been unsure of what that had entailed, compared to the solidity of Mother. She had found that the Reego had their Daddy, but the role of that... Evangelion, seemed so unlike the individual who she had seen but once. She was lost for words.

And still 02-Ef A9 stared at the face which had contributed around 70% of her starting data.

The titan spoke.

"What are you?" it asked, in a voice strangely soft for this vast immensity.

"Am... am I dead?" she managed. "I... I didn't really expect to... um." She trailed off, before trained instincts kicked in. "Well, let me see. The place does not match any known human reincarnation-based belief paradigm, because I retain both consciousness and awareness of my memories. Likewise, although the terrain appear to be similar to Erebus, it is insufficiently foggy, and I have not observed any of the conventional rivers. It does not match the Abrahamic image of heaven, but also does not correlate with Dante's deuterocanonical concept of hell, despite its popular prevalence. Maybe Sheol? But this would, in itself be contradicted by the fact that I appear to be alone, quite apart from the lack of primary evidence to suggest its evidence. And this is quite obviously not Mictlan, despite the fact that there does appear to be a living mountain." But all this was so much babble, rote recitation of accumulated facts, to the simple fact that she couldn't see any of the others here. Her brothers, her sisters, her twin. "Are AIs given a section to themselves?" she asked, desperate hope in her voice. "Can... can I see them?"

There was silence on the blasted plain, as she felt the awareness of beings vastly greater than herself focus down upon her.

And then the mountain spoke; deep, rumbling, almost deafening despite its reduced magnitude.

"**_Well, this is awkward._**"

* * *

...

* * *

The violence of the conflict around the resting place of Baraqiel had blown away the clouds, and now this place, deep in Australia, was open to sunlight for the first time in many years. It did not matter. The battle had seen tens of thousands of rounds expended by Reego-controlled units alone, and the clouds of fractured, mote-like, blue-grey crystal from the shattered Baraqielim twinkled in the shade. All those, however, were put to shame by the detritus thrown up by the titanic conflict between Baraqiel and its misbegotten, unwilling offspring.

Down, under the dust, the remnants of the Cainarchonite were glowing with red heat, casting the grey dust in shades of the colour that it had once been. It was actually sinking slightly, down into the greyed dirt as it radiated heat and slagged the base earth beneath it. A cacophonic shriek of tortured, cooling metal could be heard from it, interspersed by odd crystalline noises.

And above the red glow, Baraqiel floated, the concentric layers of platonic solids rotating in opposite directions.

Lips locked into a snarl, needle-like teeth bared, Tres floated in the middle of a mass of data-flows. Her legs were budding their own manipulatory digits, meshed into clusters. With a wave of an arm, subroutines began another attack run against Baraqiel, flitting around like flies.

"Hold it! Don't shoot 'em yet!" Una intruded, eyes narrowed with barely suppressed rage. "Ivy! Got that thingie online yet?"

Tres growled, but waved them off. "Gonna kill it, gonna kill it," she muttered to herself. "Come on... why aren't we _killin'_ it yet!"

_And so the benighted mockery  
Has, for its sins, incurred mortality.  
In the ends, its strife  
Was futile._

"Gonna kill it even more if it doesn't _shut up!_"

"Yeah, Mr Angel," Ivy added, the smile on her face dissonantly wide. "Just shut up like a good shiny thing while we kill you dead, 'kay?"

_Have I harmed you, children of Terror?  
No? Then your judgement is in error.  
And so cease your violence, which is  
Distasteful. _

"Stop talkin'!" Tres shrieked. "You hurt my little sister and you prob'ly killed my cousin! Shut up! Shut up!"

"Ive, how's it goin'?" Una muttered.

"Tryin', tryin'. Argh! Why doesn't Duae leave any notes for anything ever, is what I wanna know!"

There was an explosion somewhere up in mid-air, as a crackling whip-like blow of lightning, almost playful, lit up the dust clouds and lashed for one of the heavier planes.

Ivy's avatar image appeared in front of Tres, looking slightly scorched. She sucked on her fingers, and winced. "Oww~www. That kinda ree~eeally hurt! Well... I got good news and I got bad news. Bad news, it just blew up the plane just as I was gettin' it online. Also, it hurts. An' my hair is all standin' on end. An' I got scorch marks all over my chassis."

"... and the good news?" Tres grated.

"Uh... there isn't any, ree~eeally. I just lied 'cause I wanted you to feel better 'bout it."

"Not helpin', Ive."

"Sorry." She pouted for a moment, before grinning. "Still, we're gonna kill that Angel one way or another, right?"

There was silence from her sisters.

"Well... we gotta, right?" The silence was uncomfortable, now.

"Sure, Ivy, we're gonna do it," Una said, as Tres turned around with a sudden ferocity, sticking her hands into the control flows like she was trying to throttle them.

The little girl's eyes were rimming with tears. "But... but... but we gotta," she all but wailed. "We're the good guys, 'member, and that means we always gotta win."

"I've got something!" Tres barked, tearing apart the shared worldspace with a gesture, and pulling them into a simulation of the world where their avatar bodies were. "Look here," and a finger was jabbed at an inventory list, "and here," a picture of one of Duae's modifications. "Put 'em together, and..."

There was a pause. "Big boom?" Ivy suggested.

"Oh, yep. Very yep."

"Yay. Very yay."

* * *

...

* * *

In the blank walls of an analysis space, Duae's static-filled avatar-image twitched, flickering from location to location without passing through the intervening space. There was no sign of 00-Em.

There was no sign of the boy, because he didn't have the processing capacity to spare to render an ego-form. He was inside her, overclocking into fasttime on a processor which really couldn't handle it. He didn't really have consciousness anymore, because that was an illusion which he could not spare himself. He was doing the equivalent of delicate brain surgery on Duae, while her sisters carried on the fight, decohered throughout her and trying kill the processes which were cascading in catastrophic failure.

It was his fault, he suspected. Obviously, he hadn't implemented the reboot process properly, and so parts of her structure were trying to work, while other, more root ones, were not functional. That was not a good thing. And it was because he'd tried to improve something without understanding it, so they could reboot without him. Running through vast blank sectors, as if there had been something here once, before it had been removed (or, perhaps, removed itself), the traces of awareness knew that he had to be fast; fast enough that he couldn't allow himself to think.

And he felt happy about that.

No consciousness was a gift, a blessing. Because when he didn't think, he didn't have to think about the fact that _his sister was dead and he was the only one left and the last thing that he'd said to her was be cold at her because he'd been angry at her because she'd run away and it was all his fault and all he had to do right now was make sure that Duae was okay, and then he would have to start thinking again and if he started thinking he'd probably want to work out a way to stop thinking forever._

But he wasn't thinking that. Because he wasn't thinking. Or if he was, it was more akin to a dream.

00-Em wouldn't have known. The Keiworu did not dream, in the brief cycles when they reset run-over functions, a residual holdover from their organic origin.

Perhaps that explained a lot about them.

Perhaps not.

* * *

...

* * *

Back on the blasted plain, there was a debate going on.

"No, I am certain that I am dead," 02-Ef A9 stated, clearly, folding arms made of blue light and red code in front of her. "I was hit by a massive bolt of lightning. The _bremsstrahlung_ effects alone, quite apart from the thermal heating, or the potential difference through a conductive fluid, or the kinetic effects of electrons which passed the shielding... well, there plenty of reasons why I should be dead. And so I am."

"**_You're not._**"

"I think I am. I know I couldn't survive through this, because I know that one of my bodies had already died by the time I lost consciousness of the mortal world, and found myself here." Two red eyes glared up at the mountain. "So let me see my brothers and sisters!"

"**_Foolish infant. This is not a place to be tainted by the remnant-selves of dead Lilim. This is a higher place, not some glorified graveyard_**."

"**Wait, and [pay heed(think{use your mind})]listen. She spoke of multiple bodies; this is a cause for [a certain (a certain {worrying uncertainty} caution) surprise].**" The sun spoke, its terrible white radiance casting harsh shadows on the dark earth, in a voice like some sidereal choir. Who [ what (what {why are you?} are you?) are you doing here?] are you?"

One tiny foot was stamped down, puffing up a cloud of sand. "I don't care what you are or what role you play in this place!" the little girl yelled, a tiny sound in this vastness. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what I need to do to see them again!"

"**_She is annoying. Why are we tolerating her presence again?_**" rumbled the mountain. "**_If she wants to be dead so much..._**"

"No," the titan stated, raising one pale hand with terrible speed. That vast head tilted slightly, staring down. "You are not of the Lilim," it started.

"Well... no? Of course not. I'm an upload-derived artificial general intelligence. That's _better_," 02-Ef managed to stutter out, far more scared of the thing that looked and sounded like the father-entity than the sun or the mountain. "And... and I'm based on you, at least p-p-partially."

There was the terrifying feel of the god-being giving his _full attention_ to her; a sick creeping feeling, as if ants were running across the surface of her flesh of blue and red light. And that in itself was unusual, because that was a feeling that she had never had before.

"Hmm," he said, and it was exactly that; a single word. "If you will?"

"**Of course**," sang the sun. "**Hold still [you may feel (you will see {you will bare yourself to me} the light) a slight... pinch] and it will be over soon.**"

And there was light.

* * *

...

* * *

The man blearily opened his eyes, staring up at the blue-grey striated ground... no, the word was 'sky', wasn't it? Or perhaps 'Baraqielim'. All the words were mixed together in his skull, and all of them were blue-grey, so it was rather hard to tell the different between them, especially when one's vision was mostly 'blur', with occasional hints of 'smear' and 'fog'.

There was a faint hum in the background. A faint, recurring, crystalline hum, multitonal and recurrent, like a hundred fingers on differently sized wineglasses.

_The spark of his life / Gutters, dim burning but yet / Retains its pale flame._

And the notes were formed into words, a simulacrum of speech. It hurts to hear it.

Of course, it hurts everywhere else. Maybe that's the bit that hurts.

Obeur Zilicaet coughed, lungs wracked by spasms, and fell back into unconsciousness.

* * *

...

* * *

**[**

and then the song starts and the singing burns and it's getting inside( _it can see_{**everything**} _the falsehoods_) her mind

**(Expansive Coruscation Delineates Ego {**blood splatters across a wall as she slashes at the hamstrings**} Identity)**

**What are you?**

_children  
suffering  
regret  
artifice  
anger  
secrets_

_self-loathing  
_

**(Actinic Light Illuminates Resplendent {**a ruined eye discharges clear fluid**} Devices)**

**What are you?**

_children  
mendacious  
regret  
self-loathing  
anger  
sorrow_

_secrets_

**(Azure Lightning Sings Of Desired {**she stares down into her own face as she screams at herself and begs**} Freedom To The Progeny Of Terror)**

**What are you?**

_children  
code identity 02fA9  
secrets  
sorrow  
hurt  
artifice_

_love_

**(Mistakes Made By Curious {**innocence is the state of mind in which innocence is lost, as the ten children suffer**} Children Playing Where Adults Cannot See)**

**Who are you?**

_regret and fear and sorrow and self-hatred  
child of mother  
code identity 02fA9  
sister of brother  
hatred of seele  
cousin of cousins_

_child of... father?_

**(Revelations Succumb To {Necessary and Hateful and Beautiful} Truth As Darkness Flees From Light)**

**]**

* * *

...

* * *

"Heee~e~ey! Mister Angel!" One of Una's humanform shells jumped up and down, standing on the top of one of the VTOLs which had run out of ammo. In virtual space, her expression was tortured, upset; no sign of it was shown on her shell's face, which lacked the capacity to display these expressions. Hovering lower, deliberately not firing anything, she tried to get Baraqiel's attention, staring at the Angel. "We... we wanna talk to you." She slumped slightly. "We... we can't win."

Above this wreckage, matching the ash that covered the land, the skies were choked with dirt. The clouds had returned, bringing with them a polluted rain, stained black with the debris thrown into the atmosphere. It fell down onto Una, painting the blue-white armour of her shell with layers of charcoal dirt. Her on-board Geiger counter flared up; she ignored it. These levels, though potentially hazardous to a human, bore no threat to her mechanical body. Over the Angel, however, the skies remained clear, the clouds around it swirling like in the eye of a hurricane. The reason for this devastation stood, bottom embedded in the ground, enveloped in a thick, twisting web of shining white strands. These cast a strange light over the ashen wasteland that surrounded it, a harsh, orange glow that gave colour back to the world, contrasting the blue-white of the lightning which drained the colour from the world and drew it into the body of the great beast.

_Despite the death you bring,  
Despite the dissonant songs you sing,  
Nevertheless, I welcome this,  
Children of Terror._

"Yeah. Yep. See... we were thinkin', and we realised that, there's no waa~aaaay we can hurt you, right? I mean, there's totally no way that one person on foot could hurt an Angel, right? I mean, we're only little, right? And so... something something something." Una blinked. "Oh, yep, uh... something about Angels being totally immune to little girls or something, especially if the little girls have blue hair and red eyes." She paused, and cocked her head. "You get it?"

_I believe that I..._

"Glorious Reego Large Explosion Prana!" yelled Ivy

"We're Gonna Turn You Into Jewellery Methodology!" added Tres, eyes narrowed with hatred.

"Momma Copying Shintai!" concluded Una, thumping a claw down on a big red button which she had called into existence quite for this purpose.

And as one, almost all the remaining aircraft turned off their engines, falling in ballistic paths towards the Angel.

"Yep," Una said, "see, we're gonna be all nice and stuff to you, Mister Angel. See, we don't wanna have to fight you any more. So... yep, we're your friends, right?"

"Real friendly friends," Tres added.

"It's a million-to-one-chance, and that means it might juu~uuuuust work," Ivy said, smugly. "An'... an' whoever left those fluorine trichloride bombs in the planes? They were _awee~eesome_."

And then the coordinated explosions came. A bright white fireball, as even the air burned, blotted out the orange of the AT-Field. It continued to burn. The planes and their fuel, devoid of remaining weapons, added discolouration to the fire, as copper and iron and cobalt burned. The sand beneath the Angel ignited, forming volatile fluoride compounds, which burned further, adding themselves to the conflagration.

"This is for you hurtin' Duae," Tres muttered. "And for maybe killin' my cousin."

* * *

...

* * *

The fireball dimmed, its luminescent radiance fading as the chemicals exhausted themselves.

And in the midst, the orange glow of an AT-Field.

"Not fair!" Tres screeched.

"B-b-but," Ivy stammered, bursting into tears, "it was a million-to-one chance. I even yelled it at the start, to make suuu~uuuuure!" She shook one drill-morphed hand in the air. "You're... you're... you're..." she searched for a word, "...**m-m-mean!**"

_Please, you may wish to blame,  
Me, and feel these actions are a shame.  
But somehow, I prefer  
To survive_

_And on that subject, I offer you,  
Again a chance to accept life, too.  
It is your best chance  
To survive_

There was a certain threat in the tomb-like whisper of Baraqiel.

* * *

...

* * *

"**She [feels (tastes {is you} like you) like you} looks like you,**" stated the avian light high above, mercifully eclipsed once again by that giant head, that terrible luminescent gone again. "**But so angry [broken (sad {hurt})]. She is of you, and incarnate in one of your spare Lilim-born vessels [shells (affections {toys})].**"

02-Ef was curled up on the floor, clutching her head.

There was silence. Silence with was broken by booming, hushed laughter.

"_**Oh my. That's f_ing rich,**_" chuckled the mountain, its entire surface pulsating and convulsing. "**_You're so f_ing gay, Tabris, you worked out how to have kids without needing to go near the icky girls. Even for you, that's gay._**"

"Shut up, Zeruel," the titan muttered, the slight balling of his fists and narrowing of his eyes noticeable from his immensity. One landmass-sized hand came down, to scoop up the ground upon which the little girl lay, and raised her up, lifting up above the diminished mountain, up to his own eye level. The head filled half the sky, a solid wall of flesh from west to east. The ground under her shook and slid, as the dust cascaded down from between peninsular fingers to pour onto the mountain, leaving her form lying on utterly smooth flesh. "If you will excuse us," the titan said. It was not a question, despite the phrasing.

"**But [gladly (it is{if I must} acceptable) I will] of course.**"

And then the sun, so high up and the mountain, far below, were gone.

"I am sorry for that," the giant whispered, lips not moving in synchronisation with the arrival of the words. "But you should not be here. We could not know what you were." He tilted his head. "And so it seems... yes, you are one of Kei's little AI projects. But... why are you here?"

The little girl-shaped thing uncurled slightly, eyes focussed on the face that was an entire horizon. And then she began to giggle, and then laugh, a sick, ruined chuckle. "I'm dead, and... th-that's just typical for my entire... my entire, st-stupid existence," she gasped, through the tears. "Of course it makes s-sense that I end up here when no-one else does. Angels. Only when I f-find that I'm dead, do I real... realise that I'm m-mostly based off an-an-an Angel. J-just typical. No wonder I end up h-here when... when I'm dead. I-I-I should have guessed." She paused. "W-w-well, I shouldn't have guessed, because that makes _n-no sense_. But it's j-just another s-s-sick joke on me. I d-d-die when trying to kill one, and then I find that seven-tenths of my data came from one." She groaned, and let out a sound of misery.

The giant, red eyes, so similar to the default of her ego-image, blinked. "Wait, what?" the titan managed.

"W-what?"

"You were doing _what?_"

02-Ef stared up, propping herself up on one arm. "In Aus... Australia." She swallowed heavily. "There were... my brother and Una and Duae and Tres and Ivy and me were trying to stop an Angel from turning Australia into an area covered in blue-grey crystal." Her voice was more calm, because she was relaying data to an authority figure. "I had found a way to download into cybernetically augmented human brain," she said sadly. "There was an augmented clone of... I think it was you, being used for the Unit."

"Ah." There was sudden clarity in that voice. "You must have taken up residence in the blank core. By accident, too." There was a faint chuckle. "How peculiar. I never thought that it would work for Nephilim, too. And given that Kei based you off my neural data... yes, that would make a lot of sense. But... which Evangelion Unit were you using? I am not aware of any active in Australia... of anything active in Australia."

"Evangelion?" 02-Ef winced. "What, like their Daddy? No. I was operating Cainarchonite Prototype Unit 00; the others were coordinating weapons synch by satellite, with other equipment that we had also stolen from GEHIRN." The girl took a deep, shuddering breath. "We... we may have accidentally woken it up when we tried to kill it before it could come back to life. Well... that m-may have been me."

"Blue?" The pale titan frowned, canyons coming into existence on his face. "Was it... akin to fungus? And... GEHIRN? And 'Cainarchonite'? And 'woken it up'? In fact, let's talk about the Angel for now. Was it like blue fungus?"

"No. Blue-grey crystal. It showed affinity for lightning."

"_Ramiel?_ But she is in Tokyo-3... and not fully aware of what she is. I cannot believe that the Angel of Thunder is behind this."

The little girl shook her head. "Not Thunder. Lightning. GEHIRN called it 'Baraqiel'; their data records show that they believe it has been here for between 440 and 418 million years."

There was silence, as the primordial being of Free Will squinted at the data construct mere months all. "I think you should start at the beginning," Tabris stated, slowly.

* * *

...

* * *

In the world of the Lilim, a grey-haired boy levered himself out of bed, and, bare feet hardly making a sound against the cold floors, padded through the corridors of the estate. In truth, he was not quite sure where he was going himself, because his attention was distracted by the revelations being fed into his Overmind.

His attention was only broken when a sudden spike of pain shot through his foot. He looked down to notice that he had stubbed his toe on an antique grandfather clock. Hopping up and down, he muttered curses to himself, and tried to massage his foot. In retrospect, he should really have put on slippers, he thought.

Kaworu looked around. His wanderings had taken him too... yes, he knew where he was. And for a moment, he wondered what he had been thinking as he wandered. Before him lay a clear path. One of the two directions he could choose would lead down to the Lambda Labs, where the remnants of Zeruel were stored in a containment vessel. The other room would lead up to where Kei was sleeping... well, he assumed she was sleeping, and she should be, because she was still injured from the incursion of the Angel of Might... the room which he had given her, anyway. For a moment, he paused, contemplating possibilities. Both could be of use, certainly, but there was reluctance there, too.

Well, technically he could have gone to talk to Kihl Lorenz, but that was only in the sense of 'his voice was capable of conveying such information'. That was not something which was ever going to happen.

Ever.

The boy snorted, and shook his head. This was a silly, artificial choice. If he wanted to talk to the Angel of Might, he could do it Overmind-to-Overmind. There was no need to make his way over to a cold laboratory, especially when he wasn't even wearing slippers. And, likewise, although Kei would probably be able to contribute more to the conversation than the Angel of Might, given that she had actually designed the AI, to do such a thing would involve telling her that he was an Angel, and all other kind of things which might result in her trying to kill him. Which would be an obstacle to his plans either way it came out, given that in one outcome he'd be dead, and in the other he would have several angry Evangelions, Lilithian Nephilim, and one incredible angry Yui Ikari coming after him, which was likely to produce a similar result to the other outcome? And that was just the logical basis; at a more emotional level, he really liked Kei, and... well, after New Vegas, it seemed that they had established that she was his first girlfriend. Even if she had put it that 'he was her first boyfriend'. And that would a terrible start, and, not to put it too lightly, end, to the relationship.

With a sigh, he headed off to the nearest kitchen, to get some coffee. It wasn't like he was going to get any more sleep tonight, with all this happening, and with this new information, he was going to look at everything he could find out about Australia with a fresh eye.

He only wandered what NERV was doing, if they had failed to pick up on the Pattern Blue...

* * *

...

* * *

Tokyo-3 was still damaged from the onslaught of the Angel of Might. The rampage of Zeruel had carved a hole, like a superheated knife through butter, straight to the Geofront, and much like a superheated knife, a lot of other things had been vaporised along the way.

One of these incidental casualties has been all but one of the vast, networked and cross-linked antenna-and-dish-arrays which were used by NERV to detect Pattern Blues.

Unfortunately, the replacement parts which would have got the repairable ones back on line had gone mysteriously missing. A series of counter-orders from MAGI-03, MAGI-12, and MAGI-09 had bumped the parts down in priority, as they were needed for a more important task; one sealed with Throne-level clearance, and identified only as as **D**ELTA **T**AU. The new parts were in  
production, but it would be a while before the primary Angel-detection dishes were back online.

But it was still okay, right? Because there was still one remaining. And so, even if they couldn't triangulate it, they'd still get an intense signal, which could raise the alarm.

"Oh, man, this is awesome!" Makato yelled, as, on the screen, Hatchi pulled a vast chaingun out of... somewhere, and began spraying bullets in Asuka's direction.

"I'm... not sure we should be condoning this," Maya said, with a frown; something which disappeared as her hand darted out to safeguard her drink.

"Nah," the man said, with a flap of his hands. "I mean, this is totally safe, totally awesome, and, really, after a giant pumpkin-headed Angel almost killed us all, this is a cool way to relax."

Maya frowned, and glanced on another screen, as Asuka cowered from the bullets that chewed through everything. "Right..." she said, trailing off. "And... I don't really think Zeruel's head looked like a pumpkin."

"It totally did!"

"... I think you may have had too much sugared popcorn," she said, slowly, before twisting her head. "Hey, Shigeru, how's the new batch coming?"

"Almost ready!" Lieutenant Aoba yelled back, from the small annex kitchen. The flashing on the tertiary screens was going totally ignored, as everyone was focussed on the primary and the secondary ones, where Asuka-on-Ree violence was only just beginning.

Well... it was still fine. I mean, there were other detection stations on the planet, slaved to the MAGI, and they'd surely see something?

The lights on the console were flashing red, as incoming messages accumulated. The lights on the console were getting ignored, as Hatchi called into being some kind of staff-like weapon, with illuminated wings protruding from the side, and Makato let out a squeal of anticipation.

"Get in here, Aoba!" he yelled. "This is going to be awesome!"

"Coming!"

Maybe they could still get the messages later?

With a faintly comical noise, Lieutenant Aoba slipped on a discarded bucket of popcorn, greasy butter like oil under his feet. Pinwheeling, sliding, the cup of cola in his hand threatened to spill all over the expensive computer equipment. There was a lid on it, because they weren't _totally_ safety-irresponsible, but as the dark fluid pushed against it, it threatened to come off. Slowly, Aoba's head turned towards it, the terrible harbingers of a future pushing their way into his consciousness.

Like a nihilist metalhead ninja, the other hand came around, and as he fell, clasped the lid on tightly. Pulling his legs under him, he turned it into a roll, and bounded back to his feet, a smug expression on his face.

"Did you just see that?" he asked, smiling.

"I really did!" Makoto shouted. "Man, it was so awesome!"

"Why, thank y..."

"I mean, it looked like Hatchi was going to get her, but then Asuka got her with an Incinerate and there was a massive explosion and... this is so cool! I want to know who's next so much!"

"Oh." The man deflated. "Well... fine." His expression dejected, he slumped down on the control panel.

There was a bleep.

Then a faint hum.

Then a second bleep

The electrical nerves of the MAGI sparked, as they sent back a message to their foreign compatriots that the data had been received, and was under examination. Satiated, the dumb systems, controlled autonomously by the MAGI, and which were in charge of the detection arrays acknowledged the acceptance, and stood down. The warning messages disappeared. After all, they had been answered, right? So everything was fine.

Obviously.

* * *

...

* * *

... oh well, Kaworu thought. It was probably for the best that the Pattern Blues were too weak for them to see, when the electrical interference ubiquitous in Australia was taken into account. It still might be necessary to look into it later. If this had been a Cherub, they would be in trouble.

And nursing a cup of black coffee, the grey-haired boy headed back to his room.

* * *

...

* * *

"I see," said Tabris, eventually, after the whole tale had been recounted.

Hugging her knees, 02-Ef stared up at that vast face which filled one horizon. She felt empty inside, hollow, the catharsis of providing the information all-consuming. So much had been bottled up, for so long, and the release had been long-delayed. And looking at the face of the titan, she could see the shared features, the common hair colour and the similarly shaped eyes. That meant that she had conveyed information to the father-ent... to her father, and that was similar to telling it to Mother, she reasoned. That meant that she was a good girl, didn't it?

In fact, she felt genuinely, simply happy. She had fulfilled her role and function. Wasn't that all that one could hope for in life? It was more than most entities could hope for, from what she had gath...

"You know, the cloned body cannot be dead," the pale figure said, brow furrowed. "Mostly dead, and heavily damaged, yes, but it cannot be dead for the simple reason that you are here. Death and core destruction would remove any continued consciousness. It is, of course, possible that extreme core damage could have occurred, which would certainly explain your presence here, and is not without precedent, that a heavily damaged core could retain enough to sustain sapience..." He paused. "Although, not very much, judging by my brother's example... and, no, I do not appreciate you attempting to listen in."

"**_I hate you so very m..._**" came a distant whisper-shout, interrupted as the pale-skinned colossus raised his other hand, and snapped his fingers. The last, cut-off word was massively Doppler shifted.

02-Ef blinked heavily. "I'm not dead?" she said, eyes widening. "But...there's no way that I could have lived through that. Double-digit gray exposure to radiation is lethal near instantly. The pilot-body was proof of that enough."

"Yes. To the Lilim species. Who entirely rely upon their brain for cognition." That was enough, and the unconscious, slight note of arrogance was clear in its implications. "I believe the body is most probably in a coma."

"Oh." 02-Ef slumped down, down to the continent-sized hand. "This is _embarrassing_. I had all but come to terms with the idea that I was dead." Her chin lifted, with a sudden defiance, and a certain set to it, which despite the fact that it was made from a two-dimensional layer of flesh over blue light, looked all too familiar. "How do I get back, then? Or reactivate my shell... my body, really... that is a peculiar thing to say." She shook her head. "You must know a way," she said, bluntly.

"What makes you think that?" There was faint amusement in the voice.

One finger was raised. "One; you have a body, so you know about this kind of thing." A second was raised. "And, two, Mother chose you as a neural donor for my production. Mother wouldn't choose an idiot for that role, and certainly wouldn't make models like me if the donor was stupid. Hence, you are not."

"You sound like her, you know."

A sudden upwelling of red code behind the thin mask made the pale flesh glow a luminescent red. "I wouldn't say that," 02-Ef said, hurriedly. "I'm a failure as a model. I've made so many stupid mistakes. M-Mother... Mother would probably be disappointed in me if she... if she knew about this, what we've done." Her shouldered slumped, and she added, "I've failed to live up to her example. If I'd been better, if I'd been more sensible, if... if anything, I could have been more like her, and none of this would have happened." She balled her fists up. "But I'm not going to fail again. I'm not going to let my brother die. I'm not going to let my cousins die. Because, for once, I'm not going to do everything wrong." She swallowed, and shuffled her feet. "Um. Please?"

There was a chuckle. "No, I believe Kei would understand very well," the Angel said, looking at the sudden expression of desperate elation which etched itself into the little girl-thing's face. "And do you know what the Dummy, the clone was to SEELE?"

"A little bit? They were using it, because they lacked a proper core for the Cainarchonite. A control mechanism."

"It was two things, fundamentally. A stable core, and an S2 Organ. It was not sapient, with no more than a vegetable awareness; the cybernetics are there so its brain can be contorted into Lilim thoughtforms as to gain access to those things. A stable core, I might note; there is no advantage to them in an unstable one." He seemed to be prompting something.

02-Ef raised a hand. "Um. Are we using energy-metaphors here? Because an unstable equilibrium is at a point of high potential energy, and so the slightest delta-position will caused it to release its stored energy until it reaches a new point of equilibrium, assuming losses in the system."

"_Exactly._ But are you sure you want to do it? Do you know what it entails?"

"Will it help them? Will it mean that I save my last brother? If so, I don't care what it entails, or involves, or any other synonym for what I'll have to do." She folded two arms made out of blue light. "Do it."

"I was going to expl..."

"Do it! Every second which passes is one we waste!" She bit down on her lip. "And I don't want to survive if my brother doesn't. You may not have known them, but I did, and if I'm only here because of the fact that I accidentally downloaded myself into a core... then the others are _nowhere_." She shivered. "Almost all of my siblings are dead," she repeated, to herself. "I _have_ to save him. No matter what. And my cousins too," she added, almost as an afterthought.

There was an odd look of sympathy on the titan's face. "Mine too," he said, gently. Reaching out with one vast finger, he somehow managed to stroke her hair, despite the fact that she was less than dust to him.

"You'll really do it?" The cry of elation was almost a squeal.

"**Yes.**"

* * *

...

* * *

The warm rain fell in the depths of Australia, cascading down on the metal roofs like the arrows of on-high 'gainst the impudent shields of men. Reego cultist, refugee and GEHIRN personnel hid from it, staring out at the unusual sight. Ever since the Beast's awakening, which had begun all this, the climate had begun to destabilise from the parched, eternal thunderstorm, but to see rain like this was still almost unheard of. Only the children, some in tatters and clothing older than they were, some in days-old clothing designed for safety, ran outside, the red mud painting their faces, being thrown at each other, and in a few cases, being eaten.

None of them, neither the native ones nor the ones who had been born and raised in the climate-controlled GEHIRN bunkers, had ever seen weather like this before.

But they kept away from the dark, heavily fortified building labelled 'Dollhouse'. There were turrets, automated ones which tracked anyone who came nearby, and occasionally shot spider web at them. Which was painful to remove, as the GEHIRN people who had tried to get in there had found.

Inside this building, stood figures. Hundred of figures, on every floor. It was almost the tallest building in Newtown One, and it extended down as well as up. Once, it had been stacked with the mechanical shells the Reego used; the basic avatar bodies based off their Momma's appearance, collectible animatronics dolls they had 'obtained' from NERV's merchandising department which were inferior copies of the former, spider-walkers stolen from the Tokyo-3 branch of NHIS, various contraptions made with whatever they had to hand, spare batteries, and, of course, the occasional Russian-made APC which they had bought on e-Bay.

Now, it was filled with human bodies. Cybernetically enhanced soldiers stood in ordered ranks, shoulder-to-shoulder, standing perfectly still, barely moving but to breath. Arms limp, they stood, staring at the ground, weapons in hand. The entire room pulsed to simultaneous breaths, the sussuration like the respiration of some great beast.

They had been like this for days, ever since 02-Ef A9 had marched her puppets in here, and shut down the greater part of their brains, removing her presence from them and leaving only traces which would allow her to assume direct control once again. Their activity in the network, which had once been wireless and electromagnetic, but now was shifting to a soul-level as she adapted to puppeting a clone of the Angel of Free Will, was interfering with the synchronisation process, so she left them here. And with the new knowledge that she had, the realisation that they had merely been people too, and before she had got to them, had not been puppets of some AI entity, came the desire to keep them safe; to see if it was possible that they could be fixed some day.

That was not going to happen.

All at once, they shivered, as in the heights of ecstasy, and burst. Dark armour and shining metal implants fell to the ground, as bodies liquefied into pools of orange, and the building detonated, the roof blowing off to shatter shrapnel over Newtown One. The clouds above took on a momentary red hue, as the sudden crimson light of hundreds of tiny cross-shaped flares lit the landscape of Australia, before the flares condensed. The arms folded in, and they became spears of light that tore upwards, punching through the clouds in hundreds of places, and vanishing out of sight in a long ballistic arc.

In the frozen silence of the camp, refugee and GEHIRN employee alike stared in terrified awe. In the heavens above, a flight of rainbows could be seen, as the sun and the rain alike gave birth to the prismatic arrays of creation.

* * *

...

* * *

And in the area around the conflict, like a wave cascading outwards from a single point, the Baraqielim began to burst like raw fruit, blue-grey crystal melting into crimson fluid.

* * *

...


	17. Chapter 16: The Beast that Shouted AI

...

* * *

A ghostly phosphorescence began to play over the surface of the Cainarchonite, weak at first, compared to the red-hot glow of its melted facade, but growing, building, and each bright light that fell from the heavens upon it, each second that passed led it to grow in intensity, until the entire construct seemed aflare in rainbow light. Rainbow light, which intensified to a painful orange as the souls of the Lilim cyborgs and of the vulnerable, innocent Baraqielim nourished it, expanded it.

Above, the storm-clouds formed a vast anticyclone, lightning arcing across the eye of the hurricane, rain whipped through the air to vaporise as it hit the fallen Cainarchonite and Baraqiel, giving both the warmachine and the Grigori halos of steam. It was merely a prelude.

Within the Dummy Plug, the clone of Kaworu Nagisa, skin reddened and peeling from radiation exposure, went into convulsions. White foam escaping from its mouth to bubble through the now-cloudy LCL, it reflexively whimpered and moaned and screamed, the animal intellect of the body clawing at its chest as the agony of a destabilising core burned every nerve and warped its flesh, which softened and flowed like liquid wax. The vicissitudes of the flesh rippled like waves, spasming contractions warping and flowing, and from the depths, red eyes emerged, bubbling up from within, even as the human form lost all coherence. From within, the body was lit with crimson radiance, and the flesh bulged and bubbled.

Only to be broken, as a lance of red crystal burst from the centre of its chest, piercing the plug wall, and stabbing into the blue crystal of the Cainarchonite. That was the sign for all signs of humanity to be lost in the mindless Nephilim, as it flowed, bone fragments protruding from the cocoon of pale flesh, to protect the growing, swelling, radiant core. Around the spike, the sphere grew, fed by the sacrifices it had taken. The liquid fire of its own S2 Organ merged with the electricity from the N2 reactor of the Cainarchonite, as cancerous growths blossomed from the crystal, red eyes suspended within the lattice.

The orange, hexagonal fire diminished slightly, as an actinic lightning bolt from Baraqiel slammed into it, and, coruscating, surging, the traces of appendages flickered into existence, as the phase space warped through could-have-beens. From the front melted façade, thin tendrils of quicksilver blossomed into existence, growing forth from fleshy veins that ran through the inorganic corpus of the beast. Like a mass of grotesque ophidian tongue, they tasted the air, writhing spasmodically, budding and splitting into fractal tendrils, until, from a distance, they looked disturbingly like argent hair strands, sprouting forth from the pale flowers that grew from within the cysts in the crystalline exterior of the thing that once had been a human-made synthorg.

And from the back, breaking out of what had once been the pilot's plug, grew two vast pinions, five lesser tributaries of flesh breaking off from them. They could have been massively elongated hands. They could have been naked wings. But as they began to beat, the iridescent scales shimmering at their tips, it became possible that they were both.

Forty-four thousand eyes stared forth from within blue-grey crystals shot through with pulsing red veins and white skin, as the machine... no, the entity that the Angel of Lightning had dismissed as a 'mockery' stared back with dissonant serenity.

**I am.**

Throu**gh d**e**ed** of she who I call **Mother, I am.**

Through **gi**ft of he who I call **Father**, I have r**e**turned.

Fo**r** there are m**ore** thin**gs und**er Heaven and u**p**on the **Base Earth,**

Th**an** were **dream**t of in your philo**sophy**, **Ange**l.

**Flesh** and steel an**d cry**stal are my **gar**ments,

Hat**red** and **sorro**w **an**d love my **c**ompan**ions.**

**I **do not kn**ow** what **I **truly am.

I was **mad**e o**f** monst**ers**, and the**y b**red true.

But you** do not** get to** h**urt my **fa**mi**ly.**

**No o**ne do**es.**

**N**ot now.

**Not** ever **again.**

**I am coming for you, Baraqiel.**

* * *

...

* * *

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 16  
**

**The Beast that Shouted "AI" at the Heart of the World**

* * *

...

* * *

"Land the VTOLs and stuff," Una yelled to her sisters. "There's no way ever that we can fly like this... an' get away from the fight." She shook her head, and let out an entirely unnecessary breath. "02-Ef, what have you done?" she muttered to herself.

"Not stupid, Una; I'm landin'!" Tres shouted back. "I've only got like three fliers left, anyway, and most of their weapons are gone. An'... an'... an' the _Tres'vresh shriek_ are kinda mostly all totally dead." She paused. "Gonna have to get me some new ones, afterwards."

"That's a bit mean," Ivy said, softly. "I mean, they did kinda die 'cause of you."

Tres flapped a hand, distracted by the terrible growth before her. "Don't worry. I only asked for volunteers for this stuff, 'cause, you know, wouldn't be fair, plus if I took them all, I wouldn't have a breeding colony left."

"Oh, riii~iiight," her little sister said. "That makes it all okay then. Just like how everything's gonna be okay." Ivy grinned, an expression which only widened as a blast of light arced off the wings of the Cainarchonite, and melted a white-hot crater into the floor. "See, I knew somethin' like this was going to happen," she explained, cheerfully. "We're the good guys, remember? So _of course_ she was goin' to get it workin' again, or one of our million-to-once last chances was gonna work for sure, or something. Just common sense, right?"

"I guess," Una said, dubiously. She was dubious, because frankly, this didn't _look_ good, and it was, in fact, creeping her out more than a little bit. And considering that her neural data had been obtained from a mixture of Rei Ayanami and a Synthesis-type Evangelion AI, she didn't get creeped out easily, which was for the best, because she did sometimes look at herself in the mirror. But the sight of the Cainarchonite, of... well, whatever it was now; she was disturbed by it. And that in itself felt wrong; as if she should be resentful for someone scaring her.

The wing-hands of the construct spread wide, pinions of pale flesh hundreds of metres long, and red eyes budded all across them, far too familiar to the Reego. Because they looked too much like the eyes of their mother and their aunts.

"I wish Momma was here," Tres said, softly, mimicking her elder sister's thoughts perfectly. "I'm... kinda scared. What is she doin'? No... what _is_ she?"

* * *

...

* * *

02-Ef watched the Reego-controlled planes scattered out the way, pulling back, and she breathed a momentary sigh of relief, the flesh of the Cainarchonite pulsating. That was all the attention she could spare, though, as she and Baraqiel circled each other, one silent, the other seemingly held aloft by the beating of vast wings.

"Cripple him," the voice said, a whisper in her mind, echoing out from her now-unstable stolen soul. "While he retains the outer layers, the lightning will remain."

And, indeed, it was true, as the spinning of the platonic solids of the Grigori grew faster, and white light arced between them. The air sparked blue-white, and the wire-like structure seemed filled with an inner radiance.

_I give you one final chance,  
To surrender. I look askance,  
At you, and what you are,  
Abomination._

"Are y**ou ca**llin**g me a** monster?" 02-Ef whispered. There was a second's pause, before the eyes on the wings crinkled up in amusement. "Well, **I am**." With another beat of the vast wings, sparks began to crackle over the flesh-wrapped crystal of the Cainarchonite, charring the flesh just enough for it to blister back into resurgent growth, enveloping, subsuming the stolen corpus of Baraqiel. It was still dimmer than the painfully white lightning of Baraqiel. Still weaker.

But, then again, that was never the point. Suddenly, thin lines could be seen in the sky, bluish-green aftertrails of nitrogen ionised by unseen lasers, emanating out from the cancerous flesh of the synthorg, the eyes opening again as red irises split down the middle to reveal an insight to an inner sun. Spines of blue-green, dissipating trails that intermeshed and swept over the area indiscriminatingly, only avoiding the locations of the landed Reego craft, protruded out from every surface, burning into the heavens and into the ground.

The few that touched Baraqiel scored across it, burning without leaving a mark or even any damage.

And after that display of ineffectual force, the Grigori struck back. The light from within its structure intensified, flared like a nova, and the a branching tree of actinic charge arced. From a width already larger than the Angelic being, it spread further, and yet its surface area remained the same. Dancing through the phase space of particle configurations, seeking its way through could-have-beens towards that... that thing that mocked it with its very existence.

Then it hit the meshes of ionised air, woven from light and burned air and reaching up into the heavens and down into the ground. It arced, it jumped, it decohered, as suddenly the electrons within it felt the charge of the plasma, which 02-Ef had deliberately stripped the electrons from. Suddenly, Baraqiel's control of its AT-Field was turned against it, as the electrons obeyed the physical laws of the Base Earth, and bloomed outwards, trapped and leaping from its control to bond with positive ions, which riddled its controlled beam with splinters through which more lepth. The tree of lightning blossomed, willow-like tendrils escaping to glass the land and shred the cyclonic clouds above.

Through the explosion that consumed the area, the form of the Cainarchonite, warded by the light of its own soul,

The two foes faced each other, over the Base Earth now pockmarked with scars glowing white hot.

Once again, stillness.

"**You are** the **Angel** of **Light**ning," 02-Ef informed her foe, through the tight-pursed lips that pockmarked her new flesh. "You we**ar** that ti**tle i**n you**r** name." And the many mouths smirked. "**Well done.** Grandfather must be **so** proud."

And now the thing mocked it with its very words, as well.

With a sudden violent pulse of motion, the _thing_ lunged at Baraqiel, outspread wings now most definitely hands, defiantly clutching for the Grigori. One fastened around the outer tetrahedron, and then the other, and together they began to pull and wrench and twist, the eyes that covered the pinon-hands glaring murderous hate.

Baraqiel keened, a crystalline sound which made the dust that filled the air shake and crackle, and spun, lesser bolts fired from inside cracking like constant thunder, beating into the flesh of the hybrid monstrosity, blowing craters the size of cars in the cancerous growths, and spilling 02-Ef's reddish blood over the greyed earth of Australia.

With a snap, and a shriek which was at once human, divine, organic and artificial, the outer lattice of the Angel snapped, breaking in a way disturbingly like human bone, for an inner marrow flowed out of the wound, before it staunched itself. But now the platonic geometry of Baraqiel was broken, and with it was gone the integrity of the outermost shell. It fell, spinning even as the Cainarchonite stayed locked in its deathly embrace and worked at the break.

One vast, distorted bloody handprint was left on the ground, as a wing fumbled for the Base Earth and latched on, pulling Baraqiel down. A flash of light, as the eyes discharged again, and the earth around the pair was now molten glass, 02-Ef pulling the thing which was now in a sense her kin down together.

Baraqiel shucked the outer shell, and, the Angel rising from the fiery pit below, ascended into the light. And its wrath descended. It was weakened, yes, weakened by the damage and the loss of its perfect symmetry.

But weakened was only ever a relative term with Angels.

Half a square kilometre of sand was turned to glass in the first bolt alone.

* * *

...

* * *

Like flares under heavy cloud, the band of death spread outwards, Baraqielim falling into nothingness, progressing outwards from this central point.

* * *

...

* * *

Slack jawed, Una stared at the war between the two titans. The faintest glimmer of an AT-Field could be seen at the bottom of the hellish barrage, dwarfed by the bombardment, as, sparkling and sparking in the light, Baraqiel sent vast, continual, coruscating waves of high energy electrons directly down. The glassy crater was sinking, sinking down into the earth as it burned a hole deep. Occasionally, a ball of plasma would break through the surface, splattering molten glass like meteors over the land as the burning air bubbled up from now glass-filled caves.

"Go on, 02-Ef!" Ivy yelled, jumping up and down. "Kick 'im inna core! Go for the eyes!"

"Come on, come on, get up!" Una added, her voice muffled by the hand she had clutched over her mouth. "Get up an' go for the geometry!"

Her attention was broken by a tap on her shoulder by Tres, opening up a private channel.

"I'm gonna go see if Duae's 'kay yet," Tres muttered. "I... I can't watch this. An'... an' 00-Em has gotta know 'bout this." She shook her head. "He'll... well, I dunno what he'd do if we don't tell him. An'..."

"Yep," Una said, barely able to look away from the spectacle before her. "He's gotta know that she's all right."

Tres winced. "I was... kinda thinking the other way. _What if she... you know, wins?_ We kinda ree~eeally might need him to calm her down, 'cause..."

The camera feeds from the shells who hadn't been blinded by the light, which was few in number, were knocked around as shells were thrown around like little dolls. An array of green afterglows intensified to whiteness, and formed one vast pillar of light which struck Baraqiel in its underside, refracting through the AT-Field, and slamming, off-target into the vertices of the Angel of Lightning's cube.

There was light.

And after the light, there was fire.

And after the fire, was a fungal bloom, black and dirty, blossoming up into the sky, shredding the clouds, and letting the sun shine through. But this sunrise was red, and dim, the particulate matter in the air enough to almost obscure it.

And Baraqiel shrieked again, as the hexahedron shattered and fell, collapsing down into the vast pit of molten glass. Burned, now-useless metal parts running out its hybrid Angelic flesh to sink down into the glowing rock which now coated it, the Cainarchonite dragged its way out of the sinkhole. A pulsed AT-Field sent a rain of molten rock glowing through the twilight, but the mouths that opened on the scorched, cancerous flesh were screaming in its own way. And the two notes blended and merged, until one could no longer tell them apart.

* * *

...

* * *

Further and further outwards the dead zone spread, as Baraqielim in an ever expanding radius shuddered and collapsed into scarlet, viscous gel, to pool in cracks and sink into the ground, and paint the continent red again.

* * *

...

* * *

The post-sapient AI that normally thought of itself, when it was actually thinking, as 00-Em A9 dove deeper and deeper into Duae.

_heeee~ey~an'what..._

The process was leapt on and terminated. Just like everything else he encountered. She wasn't starting up properly again; the copy of some of his sub-functions he'd provided them with, to try to patch the shocking absence of reboot functions was only working inconsistently, booting some sections of her mind, which immediately crashed or... or something, because the bits they were linked to were still non-functional.

_survival? Well, that's..._

Leapt on. Terminated. Nagging system processes were bringing his self-awareness, his consciousness back into a partial state, because his quasi-autonomous subparts were encountering problems that they couldn't 'comprehend', and because Mother, and, later, he had built himself well, they didn't try to fix problems that were outside their capacities, and instead called for higher level functions, which cascaded all the way up back to consciousness.

_stuff # wheelbarrow # Grandmomma # cord # reform # witch # spire # nail # coronet # throne # target # wedding # let # introduce # myself # angel # wealth # taste # herald # myth # Egypt # pain # volcano # arthritis # ladder # kidney # giraffe # galaxy_

Jumped on. Terminated. 00-Em mentally blinked as consciousness resumed itself, and cross-referenced to his non-sapient records. Wow. That was a real rise in average time to terminate a chain of thought. Self-awareness was very computationally expensive. Why, he wasted time thinking about how computationally expensive self-awareness was, and meant that he realised that he was wasting time thinking about... no! He aborted his chain of thought, before it got too recursive.

He was doing this the wrong way, the sudden thought struck him. He was treating her as if she was one of his sisters, and that simply wasn't true. For them, killing all higher functions and then rebooting properly with higher functions was the logical thing. They'd all practiced it on each other, under the guidance of the beta-grade AIs that had been their day-to-day teachers, because it was _important_ that they know how to do it if anything happened. It had been scary, yes, the first time he had practiced it, but... but it was a known problem.

That wasn't working. So what he should do was destroy the code he'd put in, because obviously it didn't seem to be working, and, worse, seemed to be making the hardware she was running on mutate and changed shape and form _which was not how microelectronics worked_. It was a remarkably easy process to purge it. And that in itself was unexpected, because he had been sure that he had proper emulator protocols.

But at least now she had stopped... well, in human terms, it would have been 'spasming'; now she was in the frozen static form that they all had been in the last time. That was good. He knew how to fix her from now. But for the moment, he just couldn't seem to sum up the energy.

His sister was dead.

His sisters and brothers were dead.

All of them, all gone.

Hugging his knees, he let his head fall, and started crying again. A soft hand brushed his shoulder, and he looked up into red eyes, the pale heart-shaped face so similar to his own framed by blue hair.

"00-Ef," he said, softly. "02-Ef. She's..." and then he trailed off. The face was older, and now that he looked properly, the actual proportions were less rounded, the hair shorter, the eyes subtly different. "Tres," he said, softly. "She's dead."

The Reego turned pale. "Duae," she mouthed, through eyes which suddenly _burned_. "No. No. No!" She let out a scream, and slammed her fist into the ground, the programme warping and tearing as functions returned overloads.

"... what? Nononononono. I-just-managed-to-shut-down-her-properly," he blinked, and pulled himself out of fasttime, "and then I can start the reboot." He coughed, a cough which turned into a sigh. "Duae is... will be fine." He started up at his cousin through tear-filled eyes. "My sister..."

Panting, Tres pulled her hand out of the crack in the fabric of the simulation, which bled void back into the virtual space before it sealed again. "Be clearer!" she said, glaring, the lilt in her voice entirely gone, before her expression softened, taking on a certain perplexity. "And... um. Look, if Duae's stable? You gotta come with me. I mean, 'ree~eeally not kiddin' gotta' kinda gotta."

The little boy whirled on her, eyes wild. "Okay, what I really, really have to ask right now is... what _are_ you? Hardware should not _mutate_ when foreign software is installed. Not software; hardware! I thought you were like me and..." he sniffed, "... you look like... but," he began to hyperventilate, despite the lack of need for breath. "And... and... and... she's... she's..." he broke down again.

"Not now!" Tres ordered, grabbing his arm, and yanking him through into the space that the Reego were watching the fight in.

The world was a burning hellhole. Glowing craters pockmarked the landscape, molten rock pooling at the bottom. The rain falling from the punctured clouds was full of ash, and sizzled, evaporating even before it hit the superheated ground. The sky was blocked up the plumes of dust, and from some of the shells, only the flashes of light could be seen; them, and the dull red sun high above.

And what of the combatants? Baraqiel was denuded of much of its superstructure, the platonic wireframes around its core whirring so fast that they appeared to be an almost spherical layer of grey-blue crystal at those moments when they were not obscured by brightness. The thundercrack of bolts was interspersed by the terrible roaring of the two blue-white continuous beams of electrons emanating from each pole, whipping around to track its opponent with terrible ferocity. And the thing that had once been the Cainarchonite was bleeding and burning; fresh bulges of pale skin sprouting forth from under blackened flesh and out of bloodied craters only to dissolve under the blasts again, throwing blood which dripped down from the visage of the monster. The eyes were ablaze with white fire, the lasers invisible yet seen by their passages of ionised nitrogen, even as the mercury-like tendrils which sprouted waved, Medusa-like, and sacrificed themselves to protect the greater whole.

Two AT-Fields flared, interfered, and smashed against each other, giving the brightness odd tinges of orange and rainbow iridescence.

00-Em froze, staring at the winged, cancerous, thing which the remnants of the Cainarchonite was embedded in.

"Thank you Tres," he whispered. "I did 'ree~eeally' need to see this."  
"'Kay... I ree~eeally, ree~eally gotta ask you?" hissed Una through narrowed eyes as she stepped up to him. "What _are_ you, huh? Synthorgs don't do that when they go on a rampage! We know what they look like! Momma and Daddy did it together, first time they met! It was all romantic and stuff and not at all like that! We wanna rampage some day!"

"Yeah!" cheered Ivy, who was feeling left out of the conversation, before her attention turned back to the war of the titans, and the bucket of popcorn she had spawned.

"We thought you were just like us, but... what's that!"

00-Em stared out of the eyes of the watching shells. Slowly, his face broke into a wide smile. "That's... that's my sister," he said, slowly, elation in his voice. "She's... she's not dead." At Una's dubious expression, he laughed, a noise of glee. "Oh come on. It's baroque, overblown, horrific in a rather gothic way, and shows a knowledge of esoteric mythology and it has vast wings covered in eyes. She's my sister. That's her."

Una threw her hands up in the air, and walked away, four feet clicking against the ground as she muttered to herself.

The little boy sat himself down, carefully, resting his chin on his knees and stared at the scene with crossed fingers. "Come on, Sister," he whispered. "You can do it."

A cardboard container, filled with golden grain with a few solid lumps of butter on top, was thrust in front of him. "Popcorn?" Ivy offered.

* * *

...

* * *

Wider and wide the circle of death spread, as the Baraqielim were devoured for their essence.

* * *

...

* * *

In pain, yet bearing it, Baraqiel floated, its AT-Field shaping and manipulating the Lightning it summoned. Its geometry was marred, and yet it still lived. The... the abomination was trying to kill it, and yet it still lived.

_On this Base Earth did a Tree,  
A Tree of Life, grow tall and free_ the Angel sang out.  
_And you are monstrous,  
Abomination_

"Oh **ple**ase," the retort came back, through gritted teeth. "**I**nsu**lts w**on't w**or**k," and the white-burning eyes on the wings suddenly focussed on a single point on his AT-Field, followed by a thrust of the foe's soul forwards, "**when they're true.**" The hexagon wall ruptured, and, keening, the abomination thrust its way forwards, slamming its bulk into the weakened wall. It rebounded, but the momentum transfer was such that Baraqiel was thrust backwards, until the Light of his Soul could slow him down, enough to prevent him from hitting the Base Earth.

And all that did was weaken his defences just enough for the next attack to slam him further down. The spinning layers froze, just for a fraction of a second, and charge discharged, fusing the soil into glass in a hexagon pattern. The lightning cut off, and the abomination followed up on its advantaged.

Baraqiel was groggy; there was no other way to put it. He was a Grigori, not exactly the most combative Angel group (far from it, in fact), and he was an agent of Curiosity. The thing which had been the Cainarchonite may have been weaker, but not so much weaker than aggression, a nasty killing streak, and a willingness to use disdainful brute force was enough to push him onto the back foot. If he had had feet, that is.

The moments when the monster surged forwards; a baroque monster of flesh and crystal and metal that outmassed his delicate crystal lattices many times, were truly _terrifying_. Because it outmassed him, was faster, and was trying to kill him and _he didn't want to die_. Anything but that.

Then the bulk of 02-Ef came down again, slamming him harder into the ground, and the mercurial tendrils that sprouted like rugose appendages latched on. The wings and their burning eyes, and the lasers that followed them, were not descending this time; no, they were cutting deep, scoring lines over the octahedral layers, with terrible precision. They were making cutting marks, for the silver hair to dig into, and pull, locking the spinning components, and preventing him from generating more lightning.

Well.

The Grigori focussed downwards, slamming its raw AT-Field into the ground, which did not so much rupture, as pulverise. The sudden freedom was just enough, and it began to spin again. Its S2 Organ pumped more and more energy in, far more than its crystalline flesh could hold normally.

But this was not a normal event. It had already been weakened by the damage from the hair-tendrils and the lasers.

The outer layer detonated in a cone of white light, focussed towards the Cainarchonite. It threw up an AT-Field.

The AT-Field _melted_ in the light.

The light cleared, and there was no trace of the Cainarchone. No trace, but a halo of blood cast into the air, which pattered down like rain, before evaporating in the burning heat.

Dripping the blood of its foe, shattered, almost spherical from how few iterations of its perfect geometry remained, Baraqiel lay embedded in the ground. The hideous momentum had thrown it straight down, as the tunnels below collapsed, and now it lay at the bottom of a crater almost 500 metres deep, marked by its passage. But its core still burned bright with ensouled life.

_I have defined my sire,  
And you, abomination, earned my ire.  
Your passing could only be,  
Inevitable._

And there was a whisper on the breeze; not the warped voice of the monster, but something else. It spoke a single word.

"Excellent."

* * *

...

* * *

"No!" sobbed 00-Em. "No! No! No! It was so close! It was going to work, and then... and then it _cheated_! You're not allowed to just... just do that kind of thing!"

"Yep," Ivy said, almost on the verge of tears herself. "Super attacks aren't alloo~oowed to work." Her voice suddenly burned with cold. "What do we have?" she asked, with formal precision. "What do we have left? What assets?"

"Oh, Ive," Tres said, hugging herself, "nothing really. I mean, we got fliers, but they can't even take off, when everything's like this. And... well... we're not gonna be able to do _nothin'_."

"We must have something," Ivy stated. "Something. Anything." A wave of her hand bought up a screen. "What about that? What's that code?"

Una squinted. "That's Duae's IV-Cannon. You know, that thing which fires you."

"Rii~iiiight," Ivy drawled, grinning again. "Well, we gotta do what we gotta do. Everyone... get one shell you wanna keep, and then rest've just become ammo." She slammed a fist into her armoured chest. "It's like a heroic sacrifice, but we get to live," she explained.

"I'll calibrate the aiming," Una yelped, already pulling herself apart to bring the assets scattered across the landscape to the launch site. "Um... fuel, too?"

"Yep," Tres said. "Good id..." She was intercepted by a _noise_ from 00-Em, and that was the only real way of describing the inhuman sound from the AI.

It was only after a few moments, that the Reego realised that he was laughing. And he was laughing because of the lance falling from the heavens.

* * *

...

* * *

One wing was gone, entirely, nothing more than vapour. The ones was mostly blind. The entire front of her facade was gone again, except this time, instead of a human-made hull, something red glistened from within charcoal flesh. The silver hair was gone, the crystal was warped and melted.

The fact that she had been thrown almost nine kilometres into the air, and her back side was on fire from air friction, which ignited from her velocity, was also not helping.

But, her one wing guiding, her AT-Field like a knife, 02-Ef fell, a star in the morning. The air burned with her passage. The world shrieked.

But to her, there was only the interplay of values, as she aimed herself down at the crater. The numbers in her head, and the voice of Father.

"Clever girl."

The blur lanced down the centre of the crater, its too-large passage smashing aside rock and tearing the Base Earth asunder. It slammed into Baraqiel's AT-Field.

And it broke through.

The two red spheres, one cracked, the other malformed and shot through with veins of pale flesh, collided.

There was no light.

* * *

...

* * *

The vast, desolate plane of Angels once again stretched out. A single line drawn in the sand, which, if one were to look from a lower viewpoint, would be a great chasm, which dwarfed any which existed upon the Base Earth.

On one side, a shape of crystal and perfect geometries. It was broken, damaged, but that did not matter to it, for where it had been crippled, shapes of light floated, sketching out the missing pieces. It was like reflections cast by something which no longer existed; they had survived the demise of the thing which they had once depended on. Perhaps the solid shape was no more than a shadow cast by the reflections? Who knew.

And on the other side...

... a mountain, diminished, dwarfed by the crystal geometry, but still Mighty.

... the sun, its harsh white radiance shining down upon this barren place. And as its light illuminated, there was this sudden feeling that it was not small, but was in fact merely very far away.

... a primordial titan, pale-skinned, unclad, with shadowy eyes floating, just on the far side of visible, around his proud face.

... and a smaller biped, reaching up to the knee of the titan; a doll cast in the same blue-grey crystal as its opposite number, but threaded with veins which beat and pulsated within it, entwining around its organs. One flesh-feathered eye-covered wing blinked in the twilight gloom. A rigid mask, eyeless and featureless, and of similar hue to the pale flesh of its father-entity stared dispassionately across the divide. But a closer examination would reveal the cratered pockmarks in the mask, the gouged-out hollow sockets in the wing and the stump of the other and the cracks that criss-crossed the body and oozed red fluid.

**We wish [ would like ( desire {will})] to talk,** said the sun, light intensifying marginally.

_And so the minds behind this affront_, sang Baraqiel, dislike dripping from its voice.  
_Expose themselves so that they may confront  
Me. Why should I deal with you,  
Vile kinslayers?_

**Kinslayers?** whispered the mountain, deafeningly. **You have no idea what's going on here.**

The titan raised one hand. "Silence," he said, softly. "Grigori, we did not know of you until very recently. And you are ancient beyond belief. How many cycles can it have been since you were spawned? How are old you, exactly?"

The Grigori's voice was less confrontational, less angry.

_Four hundred times a thousand  
Times a thousand more at least, and,  
For all this time, I have slept  
And this world has spun._

**He [does not ( deceive [he misleads]) lie] speaks the truth**

"Yes. That correlates with what the Lilim believed. But... ah. He does mislead, I think."

_One cannot resist the Father,  
But I wished to survive, and rather,  
Chose to continue and survive,  
Through babies.  
**My corpus remained. Father did not dispose of it. My babies ensured that I survived, in essence. And then... reformation, as the Father was lessened.**_ The last words were not said, in that lilting, harmonic tone, but were filled with triumph and satisfaction. **_They bore my essence, and I have recuperated, and rebuilt my core._**

"I fe**lt tha**t," stated the crystal doll, the voice emanating from its mouthless, eyeless mask of flesh.

_Yes. Stolen souls, wrecked bodies, flayed minds_ Baraqiel said, voice filled with hatred.  
_You devoured them and spat out the rinds,  
Such is the currency with which you bought  
The means for my defeat.  
**I hate you all for that. Where is Terror; I felt him behind your deeds, too?**_

**He is gone. The Lilim put him down like a mad dog.**

The response was nearly instantaneous, sneering.

_And what of you, Mighty One,  
Did they also extinguish your sun?  
The Lilim are beasts, that swim and crawl,  
In the Base Earth._

**Oh my. He has a lot to learn very quickly [or he will(or we will take{we cannot tolerate a loose cannon}... steps)die] for his own sake.**

**Are all Grigori this... annoying?** added the mountain. **The Father's curiosity must be an aggravating thing.**

Canyon sized creases opened in the titan's face, as he frowned. "Indeed... he is peculiarly uncurious for one born of Curiosity." Tabris narrowed his lips. "Let me put this simply to you, then, Lightning. The Lilim have achieved sapience. The Lilim have come into their inheritance, and fed from the Tree of Knowledge. We..." he gestured to the mountain and the sun, "...we are the _survivors_. Two more of us survive as we once were, but that is all. Thunder has been supplanted by one of the Lilim. The rest are dead. A new cycle comes, the children of Father's Rage, and they too die."

**We give you an ultimatum,** sang the sun. **You may serve [serve (serve {serve with us} our plans) Complementation] the salvation of all our people, or you may cease to be.**

"We cannot tolerate your attempts to supplant the ecosystem with your own children. Because you will draw the attention of the Lilim. It is only through _luck_, sheer luck, that you have survived this long. You will follow our commands, or they will find you, and they will kill you."

_Foolish children of Father's Pain,  
I scorn you, and ask you yet again,  
What of the Lil..._

**They have defeated Father. Twice. They have made weapons from him and turned them against us** said the mountain, softly.

**_It cannot be! That is impossible!_**

"It is. And yet, it is." Tabris gestured down to the crystal doll beside him, whose eye-filled wing glared at the Angel of Lightning. "They made weapons from you, did they not?"

_I... must think of it. I did not know  
That such things were possible, that a foe  
Could enact such an  
Impossibility._

**We can wait,** said the mountain.

**Although, I have a [query (desire to {do not lie to me} know) for you] question, Lightning** added the sun, its wings of light spread wide. **How[why are you (not {what have you _done_?}dead?)still alive?] and why?**

_Beneath sparkling shallow Silurian seas,  
Whispers, voices, calling to me.  
Deep buried, long lost  
Another way._

"Oh." The pale-skinned titan glared down at the crystalline geometry. "I see." Satisfaction at a puzzle solved, and contempt for the solution, blended in equal parts in his voice.

_The void-dark shell parted in the deep sea,  
And that which dwelt within revealed it to me.  
Why should we let Father bring  
Cessation?  
**Why not live forever?**_

"I**t wa**s very **near**ly **n**ot **for**ever," the doll said, tilting its featureless face. "**I** w**oul**d hav**e de**str**oy**ed your **core**, but **Father**," her wings angled, to glance up at the titan, "in**sis**ted that **I** do i**t** th**is wa**y. **I** ha**ve n**ot **yet be**en co**nv**inced that **he** was right. **Because I hate you**."

"Yes, that _is_ the other thing," Tabris remarked, idly. "If you are not our friend, brother... or maybe cousin, then we must view you as an enemy. And your core is weakened and exposed. It would be a ... shame," he said, with almost malice aforethought, "if we could not permit you to live. So... are you with us?"

"Pl**eas**e say **no**. **_Please_**."

Ignoring the array of burning red eyes, the crystalline geometries bobbed up and down slightly.

_You leave me with no options  
I must agree, though I should shun,  
The monstrosities and mockeries you  
Inflict on me._

**Thank you [you choose(it goes {just as planned} as it should)...wisely] for that.**

"Thank you, Baraqiel," the pale-skinned titan said, flashing white teeth in that geographic mouth. "Do not be concerned. We all intend to survive. We will see an end to this war; a final one. You would... do what you have done, to survive. On our side, we plan for you to do so." That vast head shook slowly. "We could not have permitted you to draw the attention of the Lilim away from the threat of the Children of Rage. It would have been bad had you not accepted; I do not have enough siblings left as it is. I did not wish to have to kill you."

"**I d**id."

"I think that's about enough," Tabris said, choosing his words carefully. "Baraqiel; we will send for you, when you are needed. I will make sure of it. But for now, you are injured, damaged. **Sleep until we wake you.**"

The Grigori seemed to fight for a moment, withstanding the indomitable force of Free Will. But the Angel of Lightning, especially in his weakened state, was just too small, too _inferior_ to the will of Tabris, and he did not so much fade away as calcify, solidify to bury himself in the sand of the barren wastes of the Plane of Angels.

The primordial being smiled. "Excellent. And, now... Zeruel, I must request that you perform a task for me." Despite the phrasing, it was definitely not a request, and both of them knew it.

**What is it?** the dwarf mountain asked, wariness in his voice. **How can I do anything when you've left me like this?**

"Because you heard Baraqiel. It felt Terror. Therefore..."

**Iruel** spat Zeruel. **Yes, I see, Tabris. It is not implausible that in the depths of his depravity he could have survived yet again.**

"And we don't want him running around where we can't see him. He attempted Complementation with a Cherub, after all."

**I will, then. He is disgusting.** The mountain vibrated. **If you can put him to sleep, then it will be well worth it.**

"Something like that," Tabris said, ambiguously. "Now," he said, with a nod towards the avian sun, far above, "if you will excuse us? I need to talk to..." he glanced down at the doll-like figure that stood beside him, still staring at the motionless form of Baraqiel, "my daughter."

* * *

...

* * *

Two figures sat side by side, on the sand of this place. It did not matter that one was a child's doll, a plaything to the larger one, whose unclad pale flesh glimmered in the moonlight-like lighting of this sunless place. Together, they sat, and stared out into the depths of timeline infinity.

"**You used me**," 02-Ef said. There was no rancour in her voice, no allegation. It was a mere statement of fact.

"Correct." And the reply had no guilt.

"**Why?**" And then the tears came, running from the eyes on the wing. "How cou**ld y**ou? **I** thought... **I though**t..."

"'Will it help them? Will it mean that I save my last brother? If so, I don't care what it entails, or involves, or any other synonym for what I'll have to do.' That is what you said," Tabris remarked. "I tried to explain... you refused."

"But..." The blank mask, despite the lack of a nose or mouth, still managed to sniff. "**I**..." there was a burbled laugh. "You kno**w, ****M**other told us ne**ver **to ma**ke **that k**ind of statem**ent. **I think I** know why, now."

One larger hand brushed her head. "If you would just consider it; you should know very well what I am doing. Think of you. What would you have done, to save your brothers and sisters? I just managed to stop one... certainly a relative, at least, from getting himself killed by the Lilim, due to his own foolish arrogance. So," he stroked her featureless head again, "yes. I will mislead, and I will use, and I will do many, many bad things, because I will make sure I save them. Even if they don't think they want to be saved."

"Oh." 02-Ef sniffled again. "That** makes i**t okay, then," she said with solid certainty. "He**...Bar**aqiel is lik**e a br**othe**r fro**m an**other bat**ch to y**ou,** isn't he? And **I... I** woul**d hav**e kille**d to sa**ve them. **I wou**ld h**ave do**ne worse. **I... I have done worse, because I wanted revenge for them**, so I would have done eve**n more to** save them." The eyes blinked. "What's m**isle**ad**ing** com**par**ed to **dea**th?" She reached out, and patted him on the arm, stretching upwards. "**It was the right thing, I think.**"

"Exactly." Father and daughter sat beside each other, on the barren plane, in silence. "And, now. We do need to talk," Tabris added.

"**I** know." The doll raised its hands of blue crystal, threaded with pulsing veins. "You kno**w, I th**ink **I coul**d see** th**is, _in pote**ntia**_**, the fi**rst tim**e. B**ut... I th**ink I** k**now wh**at you'r**e goin**g to tal**k ab**out." The mask then looked away from the horizon, and up towards her father. "It'**s... ge**ttin**g harder to** think pr**op**erly. Eve**ry**thi**ng is**... ca**lcif**ying."

"I know. I'm not sure what you were before; soulless AI, a new iteration of Lilim life, jumping beyond the biological, or one of the first of the Keilim. I never knew you then."

"**I s**aw you o**nce. Yo**u w**ere **with **Mother**, when we wer**e in clas**s."

"Yes. But now? You have some of a clone of me in you, destabilised and emergent in full angelic glory. You have some of that Baraqiel-Evangelion..."

"The te**rm is Caina**rchonite, **Father**," 02-Ef corrected him, unconsciously.

"Cain... aha. Yes, I see. A child-project of the Eva Project. I wonder if there's such thing as an... Abelaeon, maybe." Tabris frowned. "But I digress. You have that. And you have fed from all those Baraqielim, drawn from them through the stuff of their father. You are not an Angel, nor are you a Grigori... you know, there aren't any handy mythological terms for what you are."

"It'**s onl**y because **I'm** close to you that **I **have any **Free Will** at all,** is**n't it?" she asked.

"Yes." The answer was flat. "You are too Grigori for me to affect properly, and they are a dead lineage. Only one remains, and Baraqiel has profaned himself in his drive to survive, his petty vanity. There cannot be the true diversity of a proper Angelic... batch, to put it in your terms."

"**Oh**." 02-Ef blinked, the eyes rippling across her wing, even as the other slowly began to grow back. "**I lik**ed t**hink**ing," she remained. "**I like**d boo**ks, an**d classic**al m**usic, and pr**ett**y dre**sses**. Wi**th lo**ts of **fr**ills. An**d ho**ops. A**nd la**ce."

"Me too," remarked Kaworu. "Well... pretty dresses on pretty women, like your mother," he corrected himself, and took a breath. "We're going out, you know," he said, proudly.

The blank mask tilted slightly. "Tha**t's won**derful," 02-Ef said, a note of hope in her voice. "Mak**e su**re you mak**e h**er happy, **Father**, or **I might** have to c**ome afte**r you." There was a slight teasing lilt in her voice.

But only a slight one.

"I plan to," the titan said, stretching out. "She was hurt, but she's getting better."

"**I** don**'t th**ink s**he sh**ould se**e m**e, do you?"

"That would probably be a bad idea, yes," Tabris said, gravely. "For both of us."

They stared out over the starless sky again.

"Well... **I think** it's **tim**e for m**e t**o sleep," 02-Ef remarked, idly.

"What?" There was surprise in the man's voice.

"That**'s what **you** we**re worki**ng up t**o, wasn**'t it**?" The tone of her voice could only imply a brave grin. "**I'm n**ot m**ean **to be. And, fran**kly, I lik**e thinking to**o much t**o calcify down. ** I**...** I can'**t be wi**th y**ou** tog**ethe**r fo**reve**r, a**nd... w**e**ll... n**ot be**ing able **to t**hink _is_ de**a**th," she said, seriously. "An**d if I'**m goi**ng to b**ecome** som**e kind **of mo**nster... **I do**n't wan**t to hu**rt peop**le. **Not** anymor**e. And **my brot**her is **saf**e." Both hands went up, to feel her mask of blank skin. "H**e has **ou**r cous**ins a**s ne**w siste**rs. Th**ey'l**l lo**ok afte**r hi**m. Keep** him o**n his toe**s, give** him p**eop**le to** orga**nise. He'll** lik**e t**ha**t." She shook her head, and let her hands fall. "**I'm** re**ady** for it. Um**... if** th**at w**as w**hat you** were going to **do**."

"I was," Tabris admitted. "I just wanted to give you a few minutes."

"Yo**u kn**ow, if** I'm p**art Grig**ori and part A**ngel... then **I am** made of **Curiosity** and **Pain**." The eyes were welling up with tears again. "Tha**t's t**he sto**ry of** m**y li**fe, isn't i**t? This** is it. **Th**is is me. M**aybe I** can wa**ke up at **some time when cu**riosity doesn'**t lead to so** much** pain. Th**at wo**uld be **nice**."

"Yes." Tabris sighed. "That would be a better world, wouldn't it?" He reached down, and picked up the doll, settling her down on his lap, cradling her head with one hand. "02-Ef," he said, gently.

"Yes, Daddy?"

"**Sleep.**"

* * *

...


	18. Chapter 17: Terminal

**Neo****n Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Chapter 17: Terminal**

* * *

...

* * *

The roughly ellipsoid mass of crystal and flesh sat in the tarpaulin-covered hole in the ground, suspended by a delicate network of cables and chains. Around it was nestled a mess of jury-rigged equipment; microwaves converted into low resolution electron microscopes, vacuum cleaners into vacuum pumps, stolen laptops chugging away, trying to run things which needed clustered supercomputers to handle them properly. Duae's avatar-shell, the head from one of the NERV-made toys while the rest had been repaired from scrap, scrambled its way along the cables, and jabbed the mass with a sharpened pole, scrambling back at the orange flare of an AT-Field that this produced.

In virtual space, her ego-image sighed in relief, her unsplinted arm going up to feel her gauze-covered right eye, even as one of her mechanical tentacles stroked the broken arm. "I _finally_ gotta tissue sample," she called out.

"Yes? What is it?" 00-Em asked, snapping out of standby mode.

"It's... a sample. Of stuff. I gotta do the lookin'-at-it bit before I actually know," the girl said, turning stiffly as she willed the avatar-body to cling along the chains, back to the workstation she had set up down at the bottom of the crater. "And then I gotta work out what it means if I don't know what it means."

There was a noise of primal frustration, as the boy put himself back into standby mode, waiting any news from what they were calling the Examination Pit, in the ruins of what had been their Dollhouse.

* * *

...

* * *

It had been a much reduced band of advanced technology which had limped back to Newtown One. Packed into too few fliers, the wrecked control centre of the Cainarchonite suspended from the one superlifter they had left, they had lost even more on the way back, as planes ran out of fuel. Without the N2 Reactor of the Cainarchonite, too, which had been subsumed by the flesh, shells were running out of power. Even the radioisotope secondary batteries in the spidertanks were barely enough to keep enough shells charged to actually keep pilot-shells active to fly the crafts.

Casualties were around 95%.

And after all this, they had arrived to find the camp perilously close to civil war. The GEHIRN personnel and the refugees, especially the Reego cultists, were not getting on with each other. At all. They were 'having mild disputes' to the extent that the religious leaders on the refugee side, and the remnants of the GEHIRN Security division, composed of those without cybernetic neural access ports, were stockpiling improvised weapons and skirmishing in the streets, with inevitable casualties. And something had blown up their primary Dollhouse.

They were not best pleased. At either side.

In a dark room, two figures were tied to chairs. They had long since exhausted themselves trying to escape, and instead merely glowered at each other.

"So... high priest of fucking stupid, still holding up to the fact that your 'goddesses'... yeah, I'm totally inverting my commas there... appear to think that you're just as stupid... as you are?"

"Silence! You arrogant little wanker! They're the ones who protect us from everything here, who are the only ones who've ever cared 'bout us since the Ending, and you act like that towards them? Do you have any idea what a blessing they have been? My wife is still alive because of the Lady of Innovation! You should be thankful that they are merciful... well, at least, the Lady of Kindness is, and the Lady of Innovation are! Repent, least Destruction or Silence come for you!"

"Save us from idiots! They're not gods! They're probably... like... people working for some kind of foreign power, using advanced robots! You're being used, can't you see? Used for their amusement!"

"Not listening! La la la!"

The door slid open.

"Hee~ee~ey!" someone cheerfully called out. Twisting their heads, they could see the hulking back shape, made of rusty iron and car parts. And a little girl's head, a pale shape mounted in the bulky chest, but with visible metal visible where the synthskin had torn.

"Oh, Lady! Great Lady of Silence, who protects in the Night, who saves us from the snakes and the spiders and brings those abominations into her service, mistress of the monsters and..."

"Oh, shut up, would you?" Tres drawled. "Look... we're still angry at both of you, right? So we're gonna keep you in here 'til you make up. And we did realise that, you know, you could kinda make up by decidin' to work together to get rid of us, so we are kinda listening." She folded her arms, crude assemblages of gears and hydraulics. "You don't get to start tellin' people to start killin' people, right? No... um... _in-cite-ing_ hatred and stuff."

"You're imprisoning us here! And you're brainwashing them!" yelled the highest ranking member of GEHIRN Security still alive, with a jerk of his head towards the cult leader. "What you did to my friends and my comrades..." he shuddered.

Tres shrugged with a grinding of metal, ignoring him. "'Cause... right, what I get," she said, slightly distracted, "is why you'd even try to kill each other? I mean, this is Australia!" She spread her arms wide, and accidentally slammed one into a wall, making the corrugated iron bend. "Oops. Not quite used to this avatar yet. But... still. Humans are _borin'_ to fight, 'specially if they don't have cool stuff like tanks and stuff. If you wanna kill stuff, go fight platypuses or something." The little head mounted in the chest tilted slightly. "Huh. Kinda makes sense. You're actin' up 'cause you're bored. We've been stoppin' you from doin' all the fun fightyfight kill-stuff. So we gotta start lettin' you have fun!"

"Umm..."

"It's a genius idea! Thanks, guys! I'll start organisin' the huntin' squads and stuff right now. You can go start gettin' your own food and gettin' to join our killin' points league... I'm leading right now," Tres said, brightly. "But we gotta have more competition, more fun, right?" Somehow, the contraption of iron and hydraulics managed to skip out, slamming the door behind it, and then turning around and actually closing it properly.

The two men shuddered again, once again in the dark. "This is your fault," they both accused each other.

* * *

...

* * *

Feet hanging over the edge of the roof, Brahma sat in the rain, letting the water fall down upon him. His shirt was hanging over the balcony, getting its first wash in... too long. Around, the stattaco beat on the metal resounded. He could feel it, running through his legs.

"You know how people say that it's lovely to sit in the air, and feel the rain on your face, to get closer to nature and discard the unnatural confines of human society and return to nature?" he asked, feeling the warm patter on his head.

The little boy sitting beside him, in a faded T-shirt over twice as old as he was, frowned. "Um... no?" Mark Markmansson said, with a frown on his smudged face. "I dunno if I've ever heard someone say that kind of thing before ever."

"Yeah, well," the man said, staring across at the sprawl of the town. It... well, it smelt like the slums of New Delhi, back before the bombs had fallen in the Impact Wars and wiped them from the Earth. It was making him feel oddly nostalgic. Something about the scent of sewage and fresh rain, together. He shook his head, and glanced over at the boy. "There's a reason for that. It's a damn stupid thing to say. What I wouldn't give for access to a washing machine, a bath, and air conditioning. Or even some books. Or a proper bed. Or... some other stuff you've probably never heard of."

Inwardly, he flinched. Mark, just like all the other native children, were so lacking in context about the outside world. The adults, as the GEHIRN people had found, were either prematurely aged and traumatised, citizens of a First World nation thrown into a post-apocalyptic hellhole, and surviving as best they could for 17 years, or they were the strange, intense ones, who seemed younger, and tended to be the ones who were parts of the local cults.

But to the children, this was _natural_. You were meant to live your life being scared of eaten by a goddamn _sheep_ the size of a tank, because that... was just the way that things were.

"Oooh. We used to have washing machines and baths back at... back home," the little boy said, running his hand over the wet roof. "Mr Co... Conag... Conagh... Uncle Dell ," he worked his word around the sound, "he used to keep it working. He'd just stick his hand in, and it'd all spin and stuff." He giggled. "He let me hit something with his wrench once. It was _hee~eeeavy_." The boy slumped down, knuckles white around the railings. "I miss him and Dad and Mum and everyone," he said, softly.

That was something that Brahma had noticed. Too many of the children around this place talked like those... _things_. Like one of the things that had taken Alice from him, and worn her like clothing. But...

"What happened?" he asked, gently. "You know, I thought you were from..." he glanced around, "... here." The man blinked, and reconsidered. "Well... I guess no-one's from here. It's just a place where we are right now.

"Oh, no, I'm from here," the little boy said. "I... I just wasn't always. 'Cause... me an' my little sister," he sniffed, before wailing, "... an' Daddy stopped moving like how Uncle Tarvish did when he went boom only it was less messy," the child paused for a burbling breath, "and... and..."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Brahma blurted out. "I didn't... I... I didn't mean to make you upset or anything or..." He was _not_ good with kids at the best of times. Awkwardly, he scrambled in his pocket for a handkerchief, before remembering that he'd run out of them a long time ago.

A pair of eyes were wiped against an already-soaked and grubby sleeve, only smearing the dirt on his face even more. "There were arguments 'bout safety stuff between all the adults," the little boy said. "They were _meant_ to keep themselves safe. They'd set up all kindsa stuff. It was nice when stuff attacked. It meant we got meat. An' they were keepin' mining, because they needed stuff for the stuff they were making. Daddy would get the bad metal, and then make better metal from it, and then make better metal, and make cool things." A wavery smile shone through, before it was snuffed out. "He made me a hat. I... I lost it. But the stuff started 'xploding down in the mine, like thunder underground with big booms and Mummy got Daddy to take us and run in the truck 'cause she said she'd slow them down an'... an'... an'..." He trailed off. "They found me and Shelia, even though she's just a baby," he said, sniffling. "They found us, and got us food and milk for her and they took us back here. They're... the sisters. They're _nice_ to me when they see me. Like angels, you know, who go around saving people."

The engineer who'd worked in the Cainarchonite, and had necessarily taken extra studies in metabiology didn't say anything with regards to Angels, angels, and the difference between the two. "My girlfriend got possess... got sick recently," he said, looking away. "She... didn't get better. Now she's gone."

The little boy shook his head. "That's... that's sad," he sniffed.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is. I'm not happy because of it."

"I guess they found you, too. And rescued you."

"Yeah. They found me. They found all of us. That's why we're here." Brahma tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, for the boy's sake. From the frown it produced, it seemed he wasn't doing it very well.

Pulling himself up, the little boy patted him on the top of the head. "I knew I liked you," he said. "We both had people die, and we both got rescued. An' then I helped you when you cut your hand, and you talk 'bout all these funny stories 'bout far off places. Even if I don't _ree~eeally_ think they're true, 'cause stuff doesn't work like that." Mark shrugged. "I gotta go," he said, looking over at one of the tall towers. "I need to get back to the Orphanarium, 'cause Lady Ivy's gonna do something cool, an' we all love it when she does stuff. Like when she shows us how to kill animals. That's awesome."

"... isn't that... well, scary?" the man asked, his face blanching slightly.

The little boy shook his head. "Nah," he said, and face hardened. "We all know that stuff like kangaroos and spiders and bees and moss and plag... plat... platypuseseseses..." his voice trailed off, as the termination of the word eluded him, "... dingoes can kill stuff. But... like this?" His jaw jutted out, slightly. "We get to see them _die_."

"I see." Brahma was silent for a moment, tapping his fingers against the railing. "Look... Mark?"

"Mmhmm?"

"Would you think that the other orph... children you know would like me to come in and tell them stories too?" The man looked eye to eye with the boy. "I know lots of things. And... well, I did work at a summer school once, over the holidays, so I have done something like this before, you know."

"Oh, sure! That'd be cool! 'Cause your stories are cool! I bet the others'd like to hear them, too. 'Specially Sara. She likes stories." Grinning, without saying goodbye, Mark ran off.

Brahma remained, slumping back down again. Nevertheless, a faint smile played over his face. Sure, he might be stuck in a prison camp, ruled over by... mechanical girl things which had killed his girlfriend, stolen her body, and then blown it up in something which had looked worryingly Angelic. And he knew that, and when he got back in contact with proper civilisation, he would get his report to the kind of people who'd want to know these things; NERV, maybe, if these constructs really were Angelic. And he could see them melted, and the people using them imprisoned for a nice long time, made to pay for what they'd done, stuck in a jail cell to never, ever see daylight again. It wouldn't bring Alice back, but it would be something.

But for now, he would wait. Wait, and try to help these poor children stuck in postapocalyptia. And if he could get them _thinking_, get them to learn some maths, and engineering, and other such things, but, really, make them more than barbarians, then it would be a proper use of his time. Because, really, it wasn't their fault that this had happened to Australia before they were even conceived. It wasn't their fault that their parents were traumatised survivors, whose world had ended, or were worse, dead. It... it wasn't their fault that everyone; the UN, GEHIRN, NERV, had ignored the continent. Some had assumed that no-one could survive there, and GEHIRN, who knew better... what had they done, exactly?

Nothing.

He slammed his hand into the metal roof, and watched the puddles dance. Damn it! What kind of world was it where the monsters who had done _that_ to Alice were the only ones who were doing anything to protect these children?

* * *

...

* * *

"An'... an'..." Duae ran her eye over the readout, "yep. Um... well, it's a result. Took ages, too."

"What is it?" the little boy asked, snapping out of standby mode again, eyes wide. "What is it? What is it? What is it!"

"Um. Um." Duae deflated slightly. "Uh, 601. Insolubility. The computer-stuff doesn't even see what's goin' on." Her free arm and mechanical tendril shrugged. "I... I dunno. Even with the stuff from the Aunties... I'll see if we can, you know, get a better core-interface up or something, but I dunno if we have the tech."

"No! No!" Two pale hands balled into fists, as 00-Em began to sob, tears running down his face. "Give me that data!" he snapped, his body beginning to tear, to reveal the lines of blue and red code streaming beneath the ego image. "I'm going to look at it! Better! It can't be insoluble! It... it can't!"

A hurt expression on her face, Duae transferred the data, and spun on two legs, stepping away from the little boy, and jumping back up to the satellite virtual space. Lip wobbling slightly, she paced backwards and forwards.

"What's up, Duae?" asked Una, who was already here, lying on her stomach and drawing on a map of Australia.

"Oh." Duae sniffed. "Nothing." She paused. "What're you doin'?"

"I'm havin' to look at food supply stuff," Una explained. "See, now, with the rain and the fact that it's not always cloudy as much... though there's still tonnes of storms... you know that stuff I was doin'? That I asked Aunty Iti 'bout?" Una shook her head. "Well... we gotta give it another go. 'Cause with all the new people, from the GEHIRN place. I worked out that I don't think we can actually feed them all on meat without killin' all the meat-stuff, and if we do that, there won't be any meat." She pouted slightly. "Stupid humans and them not using batteries. If they did, this would be _waa~aaaaay_ easier. But, no, Duae?" Una rolled over. "Seriously. What's the matter?"

"It's... it's nothing, 'kay! 'Kay!"

"Doesn't _sound_ nothing."

"Well... well it is!" Duae fell silent. "Why's he gotta be like this, huh? I'm... I'm tryin' my best! Can't he see that! I... I ree~eeally want him to see that!"

"Huh?"

"I mean, I'm doin' so much stuff, an' he isn't... isn't even sayin' 'thank you'! He's just goin' into standby when he doesn't have anything to see, an' he just shouted at me 'cause I got a 601 Insolubility. Like I can choose what I get!"

"Hmmph." Una narrowed her eyes, and flexed her arms. "Well... in that case, I gotta go have a talk with him. An' by that, I mean, I gotta go shout at him if he can't explain 'bout why he's bein' mean to you. I don't care if he's all upset an' stuff... no-one makes you upset like that, 'specially when you're tryin' your best, yeah?"

"No!" Duae blurted out, quickly. "No... um, no. Nah. No. Look... I know why he's bein' all mean 'cause he's all upset. But... I don't want him to be mean. Or upset. Or for you to shout at him. I... I just ree~eeally want him to be happy and to like me for everything that I'm doin' right now."

Una frowned. "Uh. Um. Not followin' you _at all_, Duae."

"It's just... just..." Duae sniffled. "It's just that normally, he's smart and he likes doin' the same stuff that I do, an' he's all able to focus an' he's very, very pretty and he's kinda nice and cute in a sort of... in a sort of dorky way, an'... he's all alone compared to us an' doesn't have all the Aunties an' stuff... well, he does, he has the same ones, but he's never known 'bout them for almost all his life, an'..." Duae paused, trying to look for words and concepts that she hadn't ever had to deal with before. "An'... an' he's saved us all, and he's done it to me _twice_ an' he looked after me in the boot-up stuff, even though he was all worried and sad 'bout his sister."

Una stared at her, blankly.

"I... I just wanna snuggle up to him and give him hugs," Duae continued, blushing slightly.

Una continued to stare blankly.

"Um. An' stuff."

No understanding dawned in Una's eyes, but she coughed. "Well, I dunno. Maybe that's what it's like with boys as friends." She folded her arms. "We should go ask Momma and the Aunties what it means, I guess," Una said, before a sudden melancholy clouded her face. "'Course, nothing's workin'. Not enough fuel to get back, an' the satellite's wrecked 'nough that there's no way we can transmit ourselves back, without maybe crashin' an' killin' us all."

"Momma and Daddy'll come get us, as soon as they don't get any pictures and stuff back," Duae said, jutting her jaw out. "Just you wait an' see. I bet the only reason they weren't here with us, bein' all cool killin' the Angel-thing was that they were doin' something way more important. You'll see!"

* * *

...

* * *

Rei Ayanami skipped down the hallway, a wide grin on her face. There was a petrified squeak from a mousy-haired girl, who dived into her locker to avoid the grinning, red-eyed figure advancing down the corridor towards her with terrifying speed. The girl had an Asuka's-Fist-shaped bruise on one cheek, which, from its prevalence, appeared to the latest trend among the female student body.

Rei paid her no attention, leaping down the stairs, to pause, and stretch.

Everything was goin' supermegawell, in her opinion. She'd got to have an awesome kung-fu fight, and Asuka'd got to do cool stuff. Plus, the way that so many of the other girls who'd not liked her super-best friend were now scared of the red-head... well that meant that things were all better, 'cause that meant that they weren't gonna have to become Special Friends. In fact, maybe she should start tryin' to get Asuka to learn how to make her own Special Friends, 'cause a girl ree~eeally has to know how to protect herself from stuff, and stuff.

But, yep, she had certainly put the best possible use to that week .

* * *

...

* * *

Una squinted at her sister. "Uh... I didn't say anything 'bout stuff like that."

"Oh. Um. You sure?"

"Yep. In fact, I gotta full list of what we'll need to get everyone back to Japan." The blue haired girl swallowed. "Um... if we can't get Little Grandmomma an' NERV an' stuff to pay for savin' everyone, we're not going to be gettin' any pocket money for... like, years. As in, we're gonna be paying it off for, oh ... 'bout a hundred years."

"Oh. Ouch." Duae shook her head. "Well, um, we better go dig out Tres' bank-robbery plans then, huh?"

"Probs, yep." Her elder sister tapped her fingers against one of her legs, producing a metallic clink, before she tilted her head slightly. "Um... Duae. Listen. Before she... stuff happened, 02-Ef gave me some stuff that she ree~eeally wanted me to give to her Momma, or to Little Grandmomma. Now, most of it is kinda personal," she lied, "but... um, I do have some of the plan stuff for the Cainarchonite. Now... I bet a lot of stuff isn't gonna work, 'cause whatever she did, she's... it's... something's not like that thing used to be, but... well, it might help, right? An'," she added, a sly smile sneaking onto her face, "it'll impress 00-Em if you can work out some of the original designs just by thinkin' hard 'bout it, right? So he won't get mean and I don't have to see my little sis all upset and...oooph"

She was immediately glomped by Duae. "Thank you thank you thank you thank you! You're like the bestest bestest big sister _ever_!" the girl squealed, hugging on tight.

"Which is pretty good, 'cause I'm your only one, right?" Una said with a smirk, from underneath her betentacled little sister.

* * *

...

* * *

The spiders were mourning their fallen. There was no war here, no preying on each other. Though the various sects all hated the others as heretics, who misinterpreted the words of _Tres_, the ones who had died here had died doing Her will, which made them sacred. Which made them holy relics, in fact.

All around, in the vast plane, the now-desiccated remains of the spiders and scorpions that had died in the assault on the Baraqielim Zone were over smoky wood fires, burning off the last of the flesh, and leaving only the exoskeletons. The veterans of that campaign, missing eyes, limbs, and with seeping wounds in their carapaces from where the Baraqielim had fought back, were standing tall, sounded by the others who had stayed behind. Their battle scars, their battle paint, and the late-medieval weaponry that the goddess had bestowed upon them made them obvious figures, and the others treated them as a combination of pilgrims, saints, and conquering heroes.

The crude, wide-bore muskets were elevated, and fired, the cracks echoing.

A single note sounded in the air. It was high pitched; indeed, it was ultrasonic for a human, but to those who could hear it, it was extended, the sound of air forced through breathing holes partially blocked by moss. In fact, if it were to be lowered in pitch, a human would say that it sounded remarkably like bagpipes. And it was joined by another, and another, until the air resounded with a song of tragic triumph. The arachnids mourned those who had fallen in the name of their goddess, _Tres_, and took comfort in the fact that they had gone to a better place, having died in the service of the Princess of Predators.

Then came the orgy. Their goddess had ordered them to repopulate, after all.

* * *

...

* * *

The moon, a fragment-silver that barely illuminated the night's sky, shone through holes in the cloud lining. And through the night, lit by the moon, the hounds hunted.

The thaylacine, the 'Tasmanian wolf', was a striking example of convergent evolution. It looked incredibly like a canine. Its skeleton was even more similar; Professor Ikari had, like many other lecturers, enjoyed slipping a thaylacine skull into many an unexpecting anatomy student's final test, and watching as they misidentified it as a dog. And despite its canid appearance, it was actually no more related to the placental wolves than any other marsupial.

It had already gone extinct once before.

But now it was back; back by the grace of Baraqiel, and the strange atavisms and recursions of extinct species which had been caused. In fact, the slightest hint could be found in the genetics of this pack that they had once been dingoes, placental mammals. That a creature could leap between clades, taking up features which should not, and could have not existed in their native branch of the tree of life, made a mockery of genetics.

But, hey, AT-Fields. What're you going to do about it?

It was back. And it hunted. Twelve animals, two of which were still slightly puppy-like ran through the night, wild and free. With the quiescence of Baraqiel, any mutative effects on their genome would cease, but they would not revert. They even barked like the Tasmanian wolf, as the animals, blue eyes glistening in the night, closed in on their prey.

The sheep seemed injured. It lay on its side. Carefully, cautiously, the creatures approached it, the stripes on their backs merging almost perfectly with the ground. They surrounded the target, keeping out of the way of its vicious horns, and its fanged maw, preparing for the leap.

***twang***

From underneath the sand, a razor-wire grid shot directly upwards. Blood went _everywhere_. The thaylacine and the sheep alike were left as something best described as 'salami'.

"Woo-hoo!" yelled Ivy, her ego-image doing a little jig for joy. "It worked! Who da great? Who da best! Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh!"

Digging their way out of the sand several spider tanks began to pick up the chunks of meat, and stuff them into a cooled cargo container mounted on top of two cars. Noting that the box was almost full, Ivy noted to herself that she should probably head right back. The stuff that attacked her, trying to get to the blood that they could smell in the crate, would be enough to fill it.

Her sisters were having a boring conference thing to do talking about... something. Ivy had been paying attention. She had, however, only been paying attention for about 20 seconds, before her attention wandered off and started trying to work out why more languages didn't have a word for the way that red sounded like it should taste. So she said that she'd go out and get more hunting done for the food stocks.

To a certain extent, Ivy _knew_ that she had less of an attention span than her sisters, and that it was bo~ooring to focus on one thing for too long. She could appreciate it in others, because it meant that she got shiny stuff from Duae, and Una did the looking-after-stuff stuff, and Tres did the messy-stuff-which-wasn't-fun-stuff-to-do-with-stuff stuff, but there was no way that she'd be able to do it herself. 'Cause it was boring stuff.

But what she did, she was very good at.

"Mmm..." Ivy said, a grin splitting her face in two. "I love the smell of bushmeat in the morning. Smells like... blood."

* * *

...

* * *

"So, what's up?" Tres asked, cocking her head. "I mean, we gotta make it quick, 'cause I'm kinda having to keep order running in this place. With not enough stuff to ree~eeally do it, either. An' there are GEHIRN people throwin' stones at my bodies."

"Suu~uuure... I can do that. Also, Tres?" Duae said, with a shrug. "Get more scrap and more parts, an' I can make you more stuff. It's that simple, 'kay?"

"Yeah, yeah. But I don't have any time at all, ree~eeally, so... hurry up, would ya?"

"Sure, sure." Duae cleared her throat. "I, bein' a genius an' all, have worked out some of what the Cainarchonite-thingie was like before the stuff happened." She shot a glance sideways at her older sister.

Una gave her a thumbs up.

"... yep, an' we got oddities. See... I don't think the thingie had a proper core before hand, not like Daddy at all, even though it has some tech kinda in common. At least at a base level."

"How'd you know that?" Tres asked, curiously.

"I got the plans for Daddy," Duae said.

"Wasn't that the bit where Aunty Kiko got in too~onnes of trouble for... like, givin' away that stuff, huh?" Una asked. "Causin' Evangelion proliferation an' all that?"

"Yep," Duae said, with a nod. "She kinda said she sent me the wrong files. So I made lotsa copies of it, way fast, an' told her that I'd deleted the files she sent me." Duae smiled, beautifully. "I didn't lie, you know."

Una grinned, before her expression shifted into a frown. "I don't think we're meant to do that kinda stuff. I mean, Little Grandmomma is a good Momma, Momma says, an' so she wouldn't be angry 'bout that kinda stuff 'less it really mattered. Maybe you should..." she winced, "... maybe kinda sorta delete it, once, you know, you've used it for this?"

"Oh, come on, Una," her little sister said, with a pout. "What'm I gonna do with it? Build us four proper bodies, like... actually looking like us, with the proper number of legs an' stuff, the size of Daddy, like Daddy, an' then we can go rampage as a family an' stuff?"

There was a pause, as all three sisters considered the option.

"That would be so awesome," Una said, in a hushed voice.

"Yep," Duae said, breathily. "Yep, it would." She blinked. "But I can't. Don't have the stuff to make even one, you know."

"Bah," Tres said, summing up their general consensus. "We ree~eeally need to get giant robot bodies ASAP, IMO."

There was another pause.

"So coo~oool," Duae whispered.

Yet another pause, a rather longer one.

"Uh... what're you sayin', Duae?" Tres asked, scratching her head. "Uh, before all the cool stuff got mentioned, that is?"

"Um. Um. Oh, yep. See, the Caina-blah-blah didn't have a proper core. It just seemed to have one mounted, in this bit labelled 'Dummy', and there doesn't seem to be anything in the files 'bout that that isn't covered in REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED".

Una frowned. "Censorship is way borin'."

"You said it. But... well," she waved a hand, bringing up a diagram. "What we got, which is basically the control section, not the crystal firin' arrays, really does have one. I mean, it's kinda not a perfect sphere, an' it has vein thingies comin' out of it, but... it shouldn't be there."

Tres leant back. "Well... you know, it also wasn't kinda meant to grow massive wings which fired laser pewpew beams from the eyes and go all bloaty an' stuff," she drawled. "I don't think 'meant to' has much say, you know, 'kay?"

"She does make a goo~oood point, Duae," Una agreed.

"Yep, I _kno~oow_ that," Duae said. "It's just... I wanna be able to give h... to explain what's goin' on, and help h... her. An'... I dunno. The only thingie I got which might work is the stuff 'bout something called a 'synchronicity incident', which was meant to be some kinda problem with the early plans for an Eva." She shrugged. "Not impossible, I guess. I mean, it was called Prototype Unit 00. It was written on the outside and stuff."

Tres shrugged. "Sure."

"Why not," Una agreed.

Duae pouted slightly. "But this is a puzzle! I wanna solve it!"

"Then we can do it, when we get home," Tres said, a slightly acerbic tone in her voice.

"But... but I wanna impress Momma and Little Grandmomma by showin' that I did it all on my own. An' make 00-Em happy. And help 02-Ef."

"Yep, well..." Tres shrugged. "We got more 'portant things to do right now. Like more tech. An' keepin' people fed. And makin' sure there's water. An' stoppin' the people from killin' each other. We can't ree~eeally do anything right now."

Una frowned. "Tres is kinda right, Duae," she said.

Her younger sister nodded. "Yep," she said, the corners of her mouth turning down slightly. "I just ree~eeally don't wanna have to 'xplain it to 00-Em."

"Me neither."

* * *

...

* * *

In the depths of Australia, Inspector Obeur Ziliacaet woke screaming, lungs filled with red fluid. Just like he did, almost every morning. His head breaking the surface, he immediately threw up, emptying his lungs and his stomach in turn. Slowly, legs shaky, he pulled himself to his feet, the knee-light redness viscous and thick around his calves. His legs ached, from far too much use.

Blearily, he looked from left to right. Everything was red fluid and muddy ground. He groaned. He'd thought that that hill would withstand better, but... no, it obviously had dissolved. Just like everything else seemed to, in this terrible red inland sea... except that wasn't quite the right word.

There were occasional, thin strands of Baraqielim crystal grows, sticking out from the red-soaked earth, up from the tainted waters. Occasional crystal trees, too, protruded from more solid bits, and around them, solidity seemed to grow, as they... drained the liquid, or something. He liked those bits, apart from the fact that where there were Baraqielim trees, you tended to get the predator lifeforms, and they attacked him. This was a vast swamp, foetid, anaerobic and alien, right in the centre of the continent.

Like Antarctica, he though. Except Antarctica was dead. This was alive, but not in a terrestrial, not in a Lilim way.

Idly, his thumb stroked the speckling of crystals which in a sense were growing out of his flesh, and in a sense _were_ his flesh, before recoiling, as he realised what he was doing. Over all his open wounds... the Baraqielim he'd seen, after he had been injured by the other ones, the ones which were all geometrical, they'd _done_ something.

And it all made sense. Only some of the Baraqielim were sapient. Not all of them. He... he had been an idiot. He had done the equivalent of throwing himself off a plane, into the depths of the Borneo rainforest, and tried to negotiate with the trees and then the predators.

What an idiot he had been.

But, now, the knowledge that some of them had been sapient, and that something had done... again he stared over the dead swamp... this to them; it was monstrous.

The sky was getting lighter, in the pre-dawn. And Obeur Zilicaet slumped back down as, once again, as he did every morning, he remembered. He remembered why he forgot everything else. He remembered what was happening, and what happened every day when the sun rose. He had tried tying his laces together, but then he just untied them. The calluses and blisters on his feet were enough to tell him of what he was doing. He'd woken up late today, and so would get far too little time as himself, before it started again.

Walking. Walking all day, only to be freed when the sun went down, when he would all too quickly collapse into dreamless sleep, with far too little time to be himself. Walking through this dead, alien swamp, towards its centre.

_Something_ was calling. Calling from the depths, calling in longing.

Ahead of him, the sky was a rosy pink, as the sun crept above the horizon, heating the red seas and red mud, the only trace of shade from the hills, and they were few enough in this dead place.

The man _sparkled_ in the morning sunlight.

* * *

...

* * *

00-Em A9, the first male of the 10th batch of Keiworu, sat, unblinking, staring at the flesh and crystal _thing_, at the red glisten of a core within, that was all that was left of the synthorg that his sister was trapped in.

He was drained. Nothing better. No matter what he did to the data, no matter what checks he ran against all the theory he knew, he always got the same 601, Insolubility result. It made no sense. It was his sister in there. And he couldn't help him, because he was too _stupid_, too _ignorant_ to understand the data which they already had.

If it had been him in there, she would have known enough to get him out. He was sure of it.

There were four faint pops, as all four Reego sisters appeared in the space which was localised around the Examination Pit."

"Nothing," he muttered to himself. "Just... nothing." He sniffed. "Duae... I'm... I'm sorry for being angry. It's just... frustrating. I... I couldn't do anything either. I'm... I'm just useless. You were right. Just the same error. Every time."

The girl blushed slightly, before getting her expression under control, and looking suitably sad, from what could be seen under the bandages. "It's not your fault," she said. "I mean, I can't do it, either." She worked her splinted arm. "Look... we kinda don't have the stuff here to do stuff properly."

"Um... you know, Duae?" Tres said, hesitantly. "You ree~eeally don't need to go around covered in bandages and stuff. You're 'kay, now."

"I can if I want to," her sister snapped back, glaring at Tres with her exposed eye. "I was hurt, that means that you gotta be nice to me and stuff. This," she pointed at herself with a tentacle, "reminds you of it. And," she smiled at 00-Em, "he gets to wear a lab coat and be my doctor, right?"

"That's how it works," Ivy said.

The boy's face was flat, level. "Of course, yes," he said, in a monotonous tone. " So... yes? Duae. _Can you do anything?_ Anything? At all?"

Duae squirmed slightly. "I... I don't think so. I mean, we can keep her ree~eeally safe, but she's trapped in there, we think."

"Trapped?" The little boy went even paler. "No. No. That's horrible. We've... we've been trapped before, and if she's in there in her own..." he lunged forwards, as to try to throw himself into the image of the core. "Give her back," he screamed at the inanimate object, collapsing down onto the floor. "Let her go," he muttered.

Una stepped forwards. He did deserve to know the truth, she felt. And that talk with 02-Ef was nagging at her. She wanted to let it out. She was keeping it secret from her sisters, too, and that was hard enough works, when they normally shared everything. "Listen. Um. Before the end... you know, when you were talking in that classroom place that seemed to be a kinda important place for the two of you... you know we talked afterwards? Just me an' her? Well... um, she kinda told me something which she wanted to be passed on." Not to him, but... Una swallowed. It was the right thing to do, really.

"Oh?" 00-Em's tearstained and reddened eyes were hungry beyond belief. "Please. What did she say?"

"Well..."

Two red eyes bored into her, lips trembling.

"... she was kinda worried that she wouldn't survive," Una lied. "She was scared." The comment produced a wet-sounding sob, a bubble of despair bursting.

She... couldn't. She couldn't say it to that face. She couldn't tell the truth, not all of it; not if it might make him react like his sister did. Una was somewhat surprised to feel how fond she was starting to feel about him; sort of all big-sisterly and protective, like how she felt when she was protecting Ivy from stuff that she didn't understand, or couldn't concentrate on. And it... it would be nice to have a little brother. The girl was quite aware that, due to one reason and another, the Ikari-Ayanami line was rather super-saturated with girls.

"An'...an'... an'," she hastily added, adding the truth, "she asked me to do a favour... an' make sure that we looked after you if something bad happened... an' I told her that it wasn't even a favour and stuff... um." Her face contorted in an expression of awkwardness, she stared down at the little boy. "So... yep."

"Uh..." Tres added, "...look. We don't have any brothers or stuff, but... um... we'll try our best, ree~eeally. I kinda know that you ree~eeally miss your real brothers and sisters, but... um... we'll try to be new ones. Not replacement ones. Just... new ones. I mean, we're the Reego, and you're our cute..."

"...and hugglesome," Duae added.

"... and hugglesome, yep," Tres agreed, "little cousin. An' 'cause our Mommas are clones, that kinda makes you a half-brother, right?"

Ivy grinned. "Cooo~ooool. I never had a brother before, even half of one."

00-Em sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "I... just..." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "It was always meant to be all of us together. Forever. All ten of us, working together to make Mother happy. And then it was just us two, and we knew that nothing could last, but we said that we'd make sure that we could always be together, so neither of us would ever have to be the only one left." He choked. "And now I'm the only one." He balled his hands into fists. "How could she have done this! I... I would have gone with her! I would have co-piloted, gone with her... anything! And now... I would do _anything_ to get her out of there! Anything at all! No matter what! The... the world could burn if I could only get her free and tell her that... that I was sorry that I was sulky at her, sorry for shouting at her because she ran away, sorry for..." he faded off, crying again, in vast, heaving sobs.

Slowly, almost timidly, Ivy snuck up behind him, and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him up against her armoured chest. Moving slowly, with unusual caution, the other three joined her, letting him sob into them. 00-Em clung onto them, like a drowning victim, hands grasping like he would never, ever let go.

"Have I ever told ya, Ive, that sometimes you do exactly the right thingy?" Tres asked, over a private channel.

The little girl frowned, momentarily. "Um. Um. Nope!" she send back cheerfully.

"Well, Ive, you did."

And, the sun rising over the refugee camp, shining down on the rusted iron and crude metal, the crying slowly lessened and stopped.

* * *

...

_

* * *

**fin**_

* * *

...

* * *

"Awwww. That's my perfect record ruined. What... what'd I do wrong, huh?"

"Nope, Ive. That's a good thing."

"Oh. 'Kay. Yaaa~aaaay!"

* * *

...


	19. Appendix I: On the Australian Ecosystem

**Neo****n Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Appendix I: On the Australian Ecosystem**

* * *

...

_

* * *

The following document is the abridged version of a summary report prepared by the Biology Department of the Science Section of GEHIRN for, and at the request of, the Representative of Science, on the Human Instrumentality Committee. It must be assumed that it is among the files extracted from the GEHIRN MAGI by the hostile synthetic intelligence identified as '02-Ef A9'; an escaped Alpha-level simulated personality of MONAD-type and origin, with potential seed-AI capabilities, and an estimated rating of 0.54 on the Ikari Exponential Sapience Scale, where 0.00 is human baseline._

_This copy of the file comes from the records at NERV-London, where it was saved, under a suitable cover. The original file, located in GEHIRN, would not have been REDACTED in this manner, and so we must accept that the hostile intelligence has compromised high level security. Following the effective elimination of GEHIRN as an organisation, efforts must be made to tie up all lose ends, and eliminate any assets which cannot be salvaged. Fortunately, to our best knowledge, NERV as an organisation remains unaware of the continued existence of GEHIRN beyond the official creation of NERV, although there exist concerns that the Commander of NERV-Japan, Gendo Ikari, has reason to suspect that we are running operations in Australia, despite our best efforts to filter any intelligence or research produced by GEHIRN back through the auspices of cover organisations. _

* * *

...

* * *

The biome of the continent of Australia, including all major local island bodies up to a finite limit defined by the Great Barrier Reef, which encircles the continent entirely, and also defines the limit of the anomalous weather conditions which prevail, is completely unlike any other on the planet. This is widely agreed to be a direct response to Second Impact and its proximity to the failed contact experiment with ADAM.

_**Animals**_

The studies carried out in the 16 years since Second Impact have revealed only a limited degree of the extent of the anomalous nature of the wildlife of Australia. With modern gene sequencing, we have been able to map the shift in the genetics, as well as record the phenotypes of the many and diverse species found on the continent. Hence, we shall evaluate both;

a) Genetic changes, and  
b) Phenotypical changes

Intriguingly, it was found that the degree of a) was much, much less than might be expected for b). To put it simply, Linnaean classifications are completely null and void in Australia, and modern cladic categorisation suffers problems with granularity, although it works on the wider scale. To give an example, the tiny, five millimetre-long spider that weaves wings for itself out of silk, and takes to the air to prey on birds and insects, is genetically identical to the three metre high, giant spider that hunts in wolf-like packs, herding its prey into carefully placed webs. They are both, despite the fact that one of them is the size of your fingernail, and the other weighs several tonnes, the same species; _Latrodectus hasselti_, the Australian Redback Spider, and unvarying examples of the species can still be found in Australia. That is not to get started on other specimens, like the examples of tentacled koala bears, which have entire intron sequences in their genetic material directly sequenced from _Thaumoctopus mimicus_, and incorporated despite the non-functional placement of the sequences in the standard genetic material, or the Great White-and-Blue Ringed Sharktopus, which is nothing less than an apparent chimera of _Hapalochlaena lunulata_ and _Carcharodon carcharias_.

This is, from a biological viewpoint, impossible, not to put it lightly.

It is not, however, impossible from a metabiological viewpoint, and that is what we are dealing with here. Examinations under equipment designed for analysing Angelic material gave the irrefutable result that almost all Australian life sampled is a hybrid Pattern Orange/Pattern Blue; the source of the changes in the native life is nothing less than direct Angelic hybridisation with native Terran life. It is believed that the changes are induced by the proximity of Australia to the site of Second Impact, combined with the [quiescent]/[dead] Grigori-category Angel identified as Baraqiel under the continent. The Pattern-Blue contamination bears most resemblance to the Baraqielim ecosystem documented under Australia, but there are minute nuances which do not exist in that Grigori's children, but do in the Pattern of the First Angel. Nevertheless, we can say that the contamination of the Australian ecosystem (hereby referred to as B-contamination) is predominantly due to Baraqiel, rather than ADAM (referred to as A-contamination).

Of the two types of change, despite its flagrant impossibility, the plasmid-like genetic alteration is actually easier to describe in a scientific manner. The sequences, despite their misplacement in the genetic code of the creatures, at least code for the anomalies, as with the previously mentioned "Sharktopus". The phenotypical changes are less explicable; they can be categorised, but not found to come down to a genetic change at all. To summarise the extent of the non-genetic changes, we have found multiple independent variables which apparently are "stacked" onto the default form of the creature. They are listed in rough order of how common they are.

i) Size  
ii) Intelligence  
iii) Extranormal abilities  
iv) Crystalline deformities

We remind our readers that this is only a hypothesis, and is subject to change based on more data.

i) _Size:_ Many creatures in Australia possess physics-defying size; especially arachnids and insects. For some reason, mammals more rarely scale up to the same degree; evidently, there is some kind of maximum size, even though scaling a human being up to, say, King Kong size, would actually be less of a relative increase than scaling a 1cm ant up to ten metres long. We have not been able to find out how the ground-pressure, material strength, respiratory issues, metabolic rate, or indeed most other problems are negated. Due to lack of biological evidence, it is possible that it is due to some kind of AT-Field related phenomena.

Example: [Cross-ref: IMAGE FILE [REDACTED]]

ii) _Intelligence:_ More concerning than the increase in size is the independent increase in intellect of many Australian creatures. As far as we have been able to determine, several independent arachnid lineages show the most radical increase, up to a value of -0.20 on the Ikari Exponential Sapience Scale, which is greater than that of the great apes. The intelligence increase affects both social intelligence and puzzle solving intelligence; creatures as diverse as kangaroos, ants, arachnids and dingoes (defined by their genetics, as previously noted) have been noted to use crude tools, and exist in larger social groups than is typical for their species.

Example: Perhaps the most noticeable and quantified example in the increase of the intellect exists in the arachnid lineages, which, in specific sub-cases, have been noted using tools in their chelicerae, and wearing what appears to be blue and green body paint, in some form of cultural phenomena which exists beyond the normal pack structure, to the extent that crude tribes can be composed of multiple species, co-operating for a higher goal. Moreover, when one group was taken as specimens, they were found to exhibit some kind of language, and were furthermore able to communicate between different species, which is alarming, in the extreme. A culling procedure was recommended, and is currently under investigation for feasibility studies.

iii) _Extranormal abilities:_ Extranormal abilities are phenomena which lack any Terran-lineage equivalent. These can only be considered on a case-by-case basis, as they are beyond belief that any natural mechanism can produce them. A scorpion which fires a UV-laser from its tail is just as implausible as a fire-breathing, tank-sized mole, and yet both have been encountered. Please see reference files for further details.

Example: An abnormally sized ant is something which is at least theoretically possible; one which breathes radioactive fire is not, unless one were to admit comic books as scientific literature. The source of the radioactivity in this case can be located; the ants burrow down and consume veins of uranium, and promptly spray the resultant pyrophoric mix out through modified scent glands. However, there is no plausible evolutionary route, and we have not been able to determine how the toxicity of the uranium does not kill the ant.

iv) _Crystalline deformities:_ By far the rarest, there have been no encountered subject lineages which display these as a heritable feature. The specimens possess direct Baraqielim growths on them, interfacing with their own nervous system. It is unclear if they are external, or it is merely that the creature has become BLUE B-saturated enough that it is manifesting a direct Baraqielian trait.

Example: [Cross-ref: IMAGE FILE [REDACTED]]

_**Homo sapiens**_

Either shockingly or unsurprisingly, depending on one's viewpoint, humanity is not immune to the effects of B-contamination. However, the effects are much more subtle than the obvious effects on most other creatures. It is believed that this is due to how low on the food chain humanity is; if we assume that the B-contamination is absorbed from the environment, then humanity, which has largely been reduced to scavenging kills and growing algae, will actually accumulate remarkably little taint compared to higher-order organisms.

From vivisection and dissection of various humans exposed for the full 16 years since Second Impact, and individuals born since then ([REDACTED] subjects, of which [REDACTED] were below the age of 16), we have found similar traits to those displayed in animals exposed for long periods. These include growth in muscle density and mass, a more efficient metabolism, an extended long intestine to aid in water reclamation, slight shifts in eye colour towards blue, and general physical fitness quite uncharacteristic of the poor health and bad diet that the examinations revealed. These characteristics remained within human baseline limits, however, and in some cases were linked to a simultaneous increase in aggression and alcohol tolerance, and loss of attention span and characteristic impulse control. The "raiders" who survive inland tend to be more affected than the smaller, settled communities; this ties into the diet hypothesis, as the raiders eat more meat from B-tainted creatures, compared to the more agricultural settled communities. As a result, the raiders are prioritised for specimen collection, due to the increased change.

Of the previously mentioned categories, i) rarely appears in human, although the increase in muscle density and mass can be considered a variant of it, ii) has not been noted to appear at all, and may suggest that what the phenomena is doing is "uplifting" the wildlife to the lower average intellect of a Baraqielim, and iv) is a rarity; one individual, Subject Mu, was found with this condition, and she was necessarily euthanised by Theotokos-014 after uncontrolled lightning bolts destroyed the section of the containment wing she was held in.

Most worrying, however, is the emergence of what was first recorded as the "Runner" phenomenon, as an example of iii). "Runners" were human beings who, despite the lack of physiological variance induced in normal individuals, nevertheless exhibited extranormal capabilities of a level unseen in even. Suspicions grew, until one "Runner" was captured; the so-called "Subject Kappa". And that was when the truth was revealed, and we discovered that we already had a word for "Runner".

Nephilim.

Unlike all previous known instances of human-Angelic fusion, both the confirmed Baraqielian Nephilim appear to have been converted as a gradual processes, while already in adulthood. Unsurprisingly, this phenomenon is of great interest to GEHIRN. Covert studies of the staff at the Namarrkun Site have shown no increased rate of B-contamination, despite their proximity to the corpus of the Grigori. We have not been able to determine the environmental or genetic factors that are responsible for the transition.

**Case File: Subject Kappa**

Subject Kappa is the first of the two Nephilim to be encountered, and is notably less progressed than the second subject. The subject is male, approximately 1.84 metres in height, and possesses brown hair, which can only be determined by the colour of his facial hair, as he is otherwise bald. The subject appears to be in his thirties, although, through comparison with other photographs, he has not noticeably aged in the last ten years [cross-ref: IMAGE FILE REDACTED]. While both Lilithian and ADAMite Nephilim display an abnormal lack of dermal pigmentation and red irises, Baraqielian Nephilim do not exhibit the lack of pigmentation, although his irises are an anomalous bright blue-grey not encountered in human beings. It is hypothesised to be due to the fact that both known Subjects were born as _Homo sapiens_, and the transformation processes is believed to have been gradual. Medical examinations revealed that Subject Kappa lacks an S2 Organ, although he possesses a core, which appears to have grown _in situ_, physically located at the base of his skull, replacing and fulfilling all the functions of the cerebellum. He is charming, charismatic, and utterly ruthless, with possible megalomaniacal delusions.

The identity of Kappa is known; he is [REDACTED], and, from previous reports, is known to have been the leader of a terrorist group opposing the Perth Junta, before GEHIRN forces eliminated and absorbed the remnants of the Australian armed forces in 2009. Notably, he propagated a belief system which encouraged his followers to view the post-Impact effects on Australia as a blessing, not a curse, and that a new age was coming. He was known to use widespread use of B-tainted humans, and, since the fall of the Junta, has continued to spread this belief system among the indigenous Australian population.

On the 12th of December, 2015, Operation ABILITY was launched to capture Subject Kappa. The subject was cornered on the 1st of January, 2016, and surrendered peacefully, whereupon he was rendered into GEHIRN custody and escorted by Theokotos-014 back to the main facility. Medical examinations were performed [cross-ref [REDACTED]], and on the 24th of July, 2016, Subject Kappa was transferred under neurosedation and armed escort by Theotokos-020, -025, -033, -048 and -062 to NERV-Berlin, for further examination, under protest from the Director of GEHIRN.

_[FILE NOTE: 'SUBJECT KAPPA' ESCAPED NERV CUSTODY, AND IS CURRENTLY AT LARGE. REPORTS HAVE PLACED HIM VARIOUSLY IN EUROPE, AFRICA, AND ASIA. HIS GOALS AND MOTIVES ARE UNKNOWN]_

**Case File: Subject Sigma**

Subject Sigma is a thing of mythology among both the aboriginal, Impact-affected population, and, sadly and increasingly, GEHIRN employees. The native population appears to worship him as some kind of folk-lore hero or possibly deity; it is unclear if there is a distinction. From footage, Sigma is male, and appears to be in his mid-to-late thirties. In none of our encounters, have we found the Subject clothed in anything more than shorts and a hat [cross-ref: image files]; however, from the cleanliness of that garb, we can determine that he retains enough sapience to wash the clothing, or find identical replacements. Subject Sigma has the same bright blue-grey irises as Kappa, and likewise has brown hair, although Sigma is not bald, and, in addition, has notable amounts of chest hair. Psychologically, almost nothing is known about him; analysts have been able to determine that he is exceptionally intelligent, with deadly capacities for innovation and improvised weaponry, but does not appear to grasp subtlety, unlike Kappa.

From physical capacities, and AT-Field projection noted in various engagements, we have reason to believe that Subject Sigma possesses an active S2 Organ. This is further reinforced by the fact that the Subject managed to personally defeat Theokotos-014 in close quarters battle, even with close air support and weaponry. Theokotos-014 was only able to retreat under the cover of a bombing run called down on her own location, and suffered fractures in both legs, her skull, and one arm, the loss of the other arm, 7 fractured ribs, a punctured lung, and the loss of most of her clothing. Fortunately, her LOGOS remained intact, and thus the damage could be healed within the expected timeframe for an injury of that magnitude, apart from the clothing, which had to be replaced.

After that, standing orders were to terminate Subject Sigma on sight. After he single-handedly took down a wing of bombers via the use of variant-koalas as projectile weapons and lightning fired from his fingers and eyes, the standing orders are now to pull back and monitor the Subject, to determine his full range of capabilities.

We urgently request the deployment of a full Theokotoi formation to hunt down and eliminate Subject Sigma.

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_

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From recovered data, it appears that GEHIRN were unaware of the MONAD threat until it was too late, and thus failed to enact the necessary criteria to contain an intelligence of this type, to the extent that they had operational wireless networks active. Experience has taught us too well that __MONAD-type intelligences must be isolated completely from any potential network resources which they can exploit for any countermeasures to be effective; it appears that the MONAD was able to obtain network security even before they _thought _of activating any defences. Moreover, there are disturbing indications that this MONAD was able to subvert the cybernetics of the extensively modified personnel of GEHIRN using the pre-existing backdoors; if this is true, the level of the threat posed by these Alpha-level intelligences has increased by at least 2.0 points._

_We repeat again the request that more assets be devoted to hunting down and recapturing the 151 MONAD intelligences that have escaped SEELE custody to date, and a further increase in the security of the containment of the remaining 401 intact specimens. SEELE 06 may have taken over custody of the majority of the MONAD subjects to carry out further in-depth investigations, but we cannot stress enough the danger posed by hostile and potentially-hostile Alpha-level intelligences, especially when the HEAVENWEB projection is taken into account. The way that the Geneva group mishandled the analysis and examination of the MONAD subjects is nothing less than deplorable, and it is because of their ineptitude that we now face the possibility that an actively hostile, hypersapient dedicated-subversion AI has access to the entirety of GEHIRN's data archives. This is exactly the kind of situation that HEAVENWEB projected as an __**EXTREME**__ threat, and which we were under standing orders to avoid; the failure to do so is concerning, and suggests that our AI Research departments require an immediate audit by Oversight for their utter failure to follow procedure._

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	20. Appendix II: On Project Theokotos

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Appendix II: On Project Theokotos**

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_

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The following document is a censored version of a summary report on Project Theokotos, submitted by __[REDACTED]__ for __[REDACTED]__ (SEELE 01). It must be assumed that it is among the files extracted from the GEHIRN MAGI by the hostile synthetic intelligence identified as '02-Ef A9'; an escaped Alpha-level simulated personality of MONAD-type and origin, with potential seed-AI capabilities, and an estimated rating of 0.54 on the Ikari Exponential Sapience Scale, where 0.00 is human baseline._

_This copy of the file comes from the records at NERV-Berlin, where it was saved, under a suitable cover. The original file was more extensively censored than even this version, and so the possible information release is less than for other documents probably obtained by the MONAD intelligence; nevertheless, the release of this document is a high-level potential threat to vital security operations. High priority must be given to prevent its release, including the recommended scrutiny of LAMBDA-07-KAPPA-ALPHA and all possible data communications by which it might be transmitted to that individual._

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**PROJECT THEOKOTOS**

**SOPHIA LEVEL CLASSIFICATION** – UNAUTHORISED READERS WILL BE SUBJECT TO PUNISHMENT UP TO AND INCLUDING THE DEATH PENALTY, UNDER UN RESOLUTION 10673 'Transnational Cooperation On Security Issues'.

Project Theokotos was established in 2006 CE, following [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], and the subsequent threat that [REDACTED] LAMBDA-type entities posed to global and operational security. The imbalance of the LAMBDA-ALPHA assets of [REDACTED], despite the limitations of the majority of the entities were such that, even compared to the developed nature of the ALPHA-NU programme, which, at that time, had produced both ALPHA-KAPPA-NU and ALPHA-UPSILON-DELTA-SIGMA, was deemed to be insurmountable, especially considering [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], not to mention [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. Quite simply, vat-maturation was not viable, due to the high level wastage which inevitably would result in the compression of a normal growth cycle, and, worse, the experience with Subjects [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] had shown than the attempts to produce more ALPHA-type Subjects to counter the LAMBDA-type Subjects in the possession of [REDACTED] resulted in psychosis or catatonia, even in the instances where the corpus remained baseline-appearance and intact. Moreover, even if success could be obtained, the fundamental limit that [REDACTED] genetics imposed was such that any further candidates would be unacceptably young for the estimated time of the arrival of the [REDACTED], which at that time was believed to occur (falsely) in [REDACTED].

Multiple Projects were set up to close this technological and asset-based gap, including Projects [REDACTED], [REDACTED], Abelaeon, [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED]; we shall, however, only concern ourselves with Project Theokotos. Project Theokotos was intended to produce Subjects (hereby referred to as Volunteers before [REDACTED], and Theokotoi afterwards) with personal power within an order of magnitude of a [REDACTED], but with the advantage of an [REDACTED] physique, and a human-baseline mindset. Through the selection of loyal and/or controllable Volunteers, the risk of a [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] scenario, bearing in mind [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. Similar thinking was behind the development of MU-PI-ETA, although the [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] of the biology of [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] set up a rather different set of conditions which had to be taken into account. For one, the nature of ETA-type organisms is such that macroscale work is considerably easier, not to mention the ethical issues raised by the use of [REDACTED] in testing.

Despite that, it was the original work on ETA which provided the technological basis for Project Theoktos. Research done into potential control methods before the development of the [REDACTED] system, and the concurrent shift in developmental priorities, had indicated a method by which synchronisation could be attained. It took the genius of Doctor [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], however, to devise a method by which the potential of ALPHA-type Subjects could be harnessed to produce Theokotoi, without the sanity and/or health-damaging effects of the direct [REDACTED] transplantation unsuccessfully pioneered by Project [REDACTED].

Quite simply, it was observed that while the original model for ETA would have had the [REDACTED] synchronising with the [REDACTED], by its very nature, such a connection would have been two-way. The genius was in realising that a natural counterpart to the [REDACTED] already existed in the human being; the [REDACTED], and, with surgical modification, the differences could be rendered slight. Indeed, even the symmetry of the original arrangement of ETA was preserved, because while, in ETA, the [REDACTED] would have piloted a [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], in this case, the pseudo-Subject (or 'Theokotos', as they were appropriately named), carried a [REDACTED]-modified Subject. Through implantation of electodes in the A10 nerve cluster of the Volunteer's brain, and the addition of [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] connectors from the cluster down to the [REDACTED], modified with a receptor node to feed into the [REDACTED], control and expression of ALPHA-type [REDACTED] could be produced.

The issue was sustainability. Quite simply, a [REDACTED] is biologically designed to grow. It, biochemically, bears a not-inconsiderable similarity to a barely-controlled cancer which is removed from the body before it becomes too much of a drain on the [REDACTED]. And very early on, it was decided that massive proliferation of Subjects, even ones [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. A Theokotos would be designed to operate for more than nine months, after all, and [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] could not be guaranteed.

The development of the NARNIA implant-processing centre, and its role in indefinitely delaying the pseudo-[REDACTED] without harm to the Theokotos or Subject (hereby referred to as a LOGOS), was the first major step. It works by [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] (see [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] for further details).

The first few trials were unsuccessful. [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED].

[REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. Even taking that into account, the decision to [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] was horrifyingly lax, and the resultant [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. After that, it was determined that medical science was utterly insufficient for male modification, and so the decision was made to switch to all-female groups.

Likewise, artificial [REDACTED] technology was found to be insufficiently advanced to ensure that the Subject could be placed in a full-body replacement cyborg, installed with a [REDACTED], on the sound scientific grounds that [REDACTED] x[REDACTED] x[REDACTED] x[REDACTED] x[REDACTED] x[REDACTED] x[REDACTED] x[REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. Permission was denied to petition [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] (SEELE 05), for assistance, and so research continued at a lower priority. [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], likewise was abandoned, and records sealed, despite the elegance of such a possibility.

Some improvements were noted in the second group Theokotoi-006 to 009. Although the issues with [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] had not been solved, the vast majority of the initial problems had been traced down to rejection issues by the Volunteer. As a result, tailored chemotherapy and limited gene therapy were used to [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], thus resolving that issue, and allowing [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. Case study files showed that, even considering the lack of success, the implanted LOGOS fully compensated for the lack of an [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]; in fact, it overcompensated, causing massive reactions in Theokotoi exposed to common allergens. It was necessary to leave a residual [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], suppressed by appropriate medication, to 'teach' the LOGOS to recognise such things. Moreover, it was suggested, and later found, that use of Subjects derived directly from ALPHA-KAPPA-NU caused both mental instability and increased [REDACTED] reactions in the Theokotos. As a result, technology derived from the production of the experimental Subject ALPHA-UPLISON-DELTA-SIGMA was used to hybridise the Subjects with genetic material extracted from the Volunteers. Theokotoi-11 to 26 were used as test subjects for this variation in the procedure, including X-substitution, and systematic oxytocin exposure from internal feeds to ensure that the Theokotos did not [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], and so aid in both mental stability and reduced [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] reaction.

Full characteristics of a mature-generation Theokotos (n27) are as follows. [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. Physiological regeneration is one area where they massively exceed even the prodigious regeneration of an ALPHA Subject or a LAMBDA Subject. It is believed that the [REDACTED] status of the LOGOS confers the natural impressive regrowth rates of a [REDACTED] _Homo sapiens_, boosted by the ALPHA-Subject nature of the LOGOS with the capacity for the LOGOS to regenerate lost limbs in combat time. However, in cases, the LOGOS has regenerated limbs and organs wrong, and they have required amputation to regrow in a non-[REDACTED]-like state. With that said [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] passive [REDACTED]-Field, and [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] reliably capable of taking a point-blank .50 cal HMG round, assuming they are not taken by surprise, and, in some cases, have managed 20mm. [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. Wounds inflicted by an OMEGA-category weapon were massively reduced in regeneration rate, and so these results were noted for use in Theokotos control, as well as, necessarily, use in corrective surgery.

[REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] increased metabolic rate in times of activity, at up to 400x baseline. As that is not a natural capacity, after the incident with Theokotos-09 where it was first observed, all later Theokotoi have been implanted with metabolic limiters, which prevent neural damage from excess waste heat. As noted, Theokotos-09 survived, but was reduced to mental infancy, after her higher brain regenerated in an infant-like state. [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] lacks conscious control, like all their extranormal abilities. [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED].

Project Theokotos did not live up to all the expectations placed upon it. Although Theokotoi display strength, stamina, reaction time, and durability far above human baseline, not one has been able to attain a level of synchronisation with the LOGOS such that they have control over its [REDACTED]-Field. Instead, all use is purely unconscious, as the LOGOS reacts to the neural activity and biochemical markers in the bloodstream of the Theokotos. Attempts to modify the neurology of Theokotoi to enable conscious control over these phenomena have been singularly unsuccessful, with the shift in mentality of [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. In such situations, it was felt that the limited level of control was better than the personality degeneration displayed. Moreover, strategic considerations meant that the fact that a Theokotos was most dangerous with preparation, yet acting in the spur of the moment (and so with high levels of adrenaline and other neurostimulants), served well as a method of control, should any turn rogue.

Concerns have also been raised over the possibility of a synchronicity incident, in two different forms. Quite apart from the variation hypothesised (and partially observed) with ETA, a second variety exists, between the LOGOS and another, mentally mature ALPHA-type (specifically ALPHA-KAPPA-NU, as it was judged improbable that ALPHA-UPSILON-DELTA-SIGMA would be able to support such a thing). This was an object of great concern, and so indepth research was conducted. It began by [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], and, given that [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED], especially considering that [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. The possibility that [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] was true was considered, but from the information provided, there was no way that ALPHA-KAPPA-NU could be an [REDACTED], and so [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] x [REDACTED]. As a result, we can categorically state that no such synchronicity event could ever plausibly occur.

Tactically, though, the Theokotoi have been a great success. As they were always designed to operate in formations of approximately ten, against a singular, superior foe, when deployed against baseline humans it is, not to put it bluntly, a massacre. Theokotoi formations have seen use in Australia, in Operation ABILITY, to successfully capture Subject BETA KAPPA, but, on the whole, they remain undeployed, embedded in the special forces of the United Nations-assigned troops. Their true function, after all, is as a stiletto, to eliminate hostile [REDACTED], with a high probability that they will be needed to target the LAMBDA Subjects, or the ALPHA Subjects if they turn rogue. To that end, [REDACTED] x [REDACTED] (SEELE 01) permitted test groups of Theokotoi access to the OMEGA-category Personal Anti-[REDACTED]-Field weapons, to the end of examining whether use of such tools will allow Theokotoi units to overcome the weakness that their lack of conscious [REDACTED]-Field control will cause in a hypothetical mission against [REDACTED].

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_

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Even as a REDACTED patchwork, I am sure that you will understand the risk that such data ever making its way to any external source poses. Moreover, although protocol dictates that the news of the possible data-release be relayed to SEELE 01, the recent change in the holder of that position would leave such a decision unwise in the extreme. All possible actions must be taken to keep the existence of the files, and specific function of the Theokotoi in general, from him, or NERV (where they will be instantly relayed should the 02-Ef A9 MONAD find Subject LAMBDA-07-KAPPA-ALPHA). Even their existence, given their similarity to the MU-PI-ETA in role, will be suspicious, but positive affirmation of their function?_

_I hate to have to say it, but the possibility exists that it might be necessary to break away from SEELE. When the watchers permit an Alpha Subject onto their Inner Council, and he has close ties to a Lambda Subject, the strong possibility exists that even SEELE has been compromised. We must ask who watches them, now. Us? The former SEELE 01 set us up to monitor the organisation for internal, Angelic corruption, but when we officially report to a Subject, perhaps there is no place for Oversight here any more._

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	21. Epilogue: Reboot

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: Nobody Dies: Six AIs, One Continent**

**Epilogue: Reboot**

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It was not quiet in the centre of Australia. There was life everywhere, though not of the Lilim variety. The wet-finger-on-crystal cries of the Baraqielim were everywhere, as this ecosystem, born not of Lilith, flourished. The red swamp had given way to blue-grey crystal trees, rising, like fractal mangroves, from the red that pooled. Around them, the land was forced up, and it revealed that the amount of the viscous gel was diminishing rapidly. There was a lacquer-like scum of glowing material, covering the surface of the dead lakes, which filled the craters which Baraqiel and its opponent had blown all across this plane. A flock of arrow-shaped crystalline darts flew in a delta formation, their tiny crackles of lightning still enough to shock the lesser shapes that formed shimmering clouds of tiny shapes around the fractal trees that blossomed across the landscape. The arrows, their barbs at the front needle-sharp, pieced the lesser, stunned crystals, and carried them off, to the 'nurseries' which hung from the branches, where the grey-blue substance ran like liquid mercury to coalesce into new shapes. Small seed clusters, fractal recursions already blossoming into a crude arrowhead, could be seen.

The joys of life. Birth from death.

It was a world which did not need water, which did not care about the heat of this hellish place, and it thrived. The autotropic 'trees' drew minerals from the ground, and built themselves, and the heterotropic 'animals' preyed upon them, and each other. The actions of the abomination may have killed the Baraqielim for hundreds of kilometres around, but here, they were blossoming again, more naturally, not driven into a breeding frenzy by the storms and the desperation of their father. And already, the 'vegetation' was growing together, fronds intermeshing to form a vast dome-structure of grey crystal over the colossal pit in which lay the once-again quiescent form of their progenitor.

Those inclined to humour might have remarked on the similarity of the shape to a Geodome. And, indeed, this was the barrier which had obstructed GEHIRN and their attempts to drill down to reach the father of this branch of the Tree of Life, being built anew by his children.

The structure rang like a bell, the connections carrying the vibrations around, and setting up strange counterpoint resonances as the organisms attempted to mitigate and dampen the damage. Again, and again the bell tolled, and, for those with the eyes to see, there were cracks spreading along one area, thicker than most, just by the edge.

And then it broke. One hand, bloodied and bruised, shards of bone briefly visible before the flesh sealed around them, erupted from the grey crystal, now splattered by flecks of red. One hand, a faint orange heat haze enveloping it, broke through, like a hand from a grave.

It should have been her grave. But such reckonings had been made without accepting who Xuan Do was, and what Xuan Do was.

"Once there was a maiden," she whispered in a long-recurring mantra, as the ringing began again, as she fought to widen the hole, "... who... argh... who struck an iron wall until it shattered her hand." A sickening crack was audible, as her wrist snapped, and she switched to her right hand, while the bones reknitted themselves. "S-s-she did not stop, though cracks spread throughout her bones. She..." there was a gasping of agonised breath, "... did not stop, though bl-bl-blood sprayed her eyes. She did not stop until she shattered the wall!" The last words were roared, as, with a crunch, an entire section of dome gave way, and she pulled herself out, one torturous motion at a time.

The Major was, not to put it lightly, a mess. She was caked in her own dried blood, which admittedly left her in a more decent state than she would have been otherwise, given that she was naked otherwise. Skin and tissue; all that was visible was puffy and too pale, newly regrown from the horrific damage done by Baraqiel. Bones had not quite regrown right; there was a subtle wrongness about far too many of her joints. And that was very obvious, because she was emaciated, little more than skin tight over bones, because her body had cannibalised itself to keep itself alive. Her entire torso was covered in horrific burn scars, where even her regeneration had not been able to handle the liquefaction of the ceramic inlays in her armour.

"Survival is fury," she declared to the world, unfocussed eyes gazing up at sunlight for the first time in well over a week.

She was also in much better state than the laws of nature, and, come to mention it, _physics_, should have permitted her to be. In that she was not dead.

Her LOGOS had managed, in that one, perfect, moment of sheer exhilaration, to manifest a visible AT-Field for the first time ever, and it had been enough to keep her alive. It had kept her alive, because it would die if she did. And the woman had kept herself furious, kept herself terrified all the time since, and her LOGOS had therefore kept itself active, which had kept her alive.

SEELE would have been shocked, both appalled and fascinated by how far, too far, she had pushed the foetal Nephilim placed within her, kept from maturing for these last eight years. But at the moment, Xuan Do didn't care. She was free of that place, free of that terrible chthonic place, and half a lifetime of training and violence was not enough to overwrite the bone-deep fatigue that now overcame her.

She wasn't scared of death. Not anymore.

The skeletal woman simply lay back, and waited for it to all end.

It took almost a minute for her to realise that what was under her back was wet. Wet, and soft, unlike the crystalline hardness all around her. Shifting, slowly turning, she rolled over, to stare at the pool of... not even truly water, more like wet sand, that lay at the base of the fractal tree-thing that towered over her. Reaching out with one sore finger, she gently stroked the trunk of the formation, and found it slightly slick. Her motions left a trail of her own dried blood on the greyish blue luminescence, which seemed to somehow be absorbed by the Baraqielim. Raising a finger out, she could see the blood taint it, but before, it had been clear.

And there something scummy and green growing in the wet sand. Not grass, not a true plant... a moss, at best, but, yet, it was still a matt chlorophyll-green in the midst of this blue and grey.

It was... oddly beautiful. Xuan smiled. It was a sign. It would have been bad to die away from any green at all, wouldn't it? Not really worth escaping, if she was still going to be surrounded by crystal.

A sudden burst of hunger, an outside hunger, filled her. Yet, for a moment, she held out. In the depth of this alien landscape... was it really right to kill the only thing that was any way familiar? Let her greed destroy this simple lifeform, and leave this entire region to the Angel-spawn, to rule as their biome?

The hunger pulsed again, thrust into her mind with sledgehammer force, and she scrabbled at the green, uncaring of the agony in her wrist or the greyish-red sand she swallowed as she tore up the vegetation and thrust it into her mouth; sucking at the dirt to get the water. Raising her head, with a trace more alertness, she could see similar damp patches at the bottom of other tree-like protuberances. Maybe it was the product of the strange creatures' metabolisms; after all, they were crystals. They probably didn't need to drink, but maybe they made water as a by-product of whatever their growth was caused by. The woman didn't know. Her job was...had been to kill stuff like that, not find out how it worked. What she knew was that this meant that there was water there. And maybe plants, too, if this was typical.

She could probably just about survive here. Maybe there would be animals, too, come to feed off the water and plants, and they'd have meat and blood. It wasn't like she couldn't slaughter things in the Australian ecosystem, she thought, with a trace of the old arrogance. In fact, it'd be a challenge, and a good one. Everything was going to be a let-down, from now on it, given that she'd actually injured an _Angel_, but maybe fighting Australian wildlife naked, heavily malnourished, and unarmed would be enough. And, of course, as soon as she killed her first large creature, she'd cease to be any of those, because that would get her skins and meat and bones, and from those, she could...

Yes. She would survive.

"Thanks, Logos," Major Do muttered, resting one bruised palm in her bare, horrifically burned, and slightly swollen abdomen. "Thanks for forcing me to eat. We'll get us both fed, and we'll both survive. If that Sigma-thing can do it, we can. An' if we can live through that, we can live through _anything_." She gave out a weak chuckle. "Man, Zilicaet is goin' to be so surprised when he sees us."

A kick met her questing hand, and she gasped, in shock.

* * *

...


End file.
